A Story With No Name
by The Fifth Champion
Summary: This is a story with no name, about a boy with no name. Though he is lost now, dead, forgotten...they called him Luke. Snippets of a traitor's life from early childhood to present day.
1. Heaven

A Story with No Name

This is a story with no name-

About a boy with no name-

Though he is lost now,

Dead-

Forgotten-

They called him Luke.

"Heaven. What is heaven, Mommy? What does it look like?"

Andromeda didn't answer; too concerned with the amber liquid she swilled around the bottom of a green-tinged bottle. The taste was hot and peppery in her mouth, burning her rosebud lips, tingling on a tongue that lapped up the last droplets feverishly, hungrily. The words were a mere faraway buzz to her, small, soft, and childlike; just an annoying tickle that crept into her heedless ears and distorted a mind already hazed with potent drink.

The woman disliked the disturbance, however petty, however ordinary it had become to her pitiful existence: she was always ignoring the quiet, little boy whisper that pestered her drinking sessions.

Andromeda raised the glass slowly to her lips—as she always did—and took moderate, prolonged sips—(her fifth glass of the hour)—savoring the feel of strong alcohol as it swished between her teeth. She thought there was something special about this sip, the way it made the room blur pleasantly about the edges and muddled her thoughts contentedly. It did well to stifle the disease of depression that still ravaged her heart and soul.

Andromeda liked the effects of alcohol—the lingering warmth, the surreal lightness, the vagueness of perception—almost as much as she liked the pounding hangovers that followed, throbbing enough to overcome the customary aches and bruises of a dysfunctional household.

But the liquid slid down her throat and suddenly the bottle was empty. She felt her stomach clench, a terrible prickling sensation skidding down her spine. _More, more—_but it was gone.

Her fingers slackened on the drink, her eyes almost straying to the boy who sat cross-legged before her, though the impulse was squelched about as quickly as it had risen within her. Andromeda would not look.

She threw back her head roughly, jagged, uneven locks of auburn hair tumbling off her pale brow. She would not look at the boy. She would expunge any decaying dregs of motherly affection she still harbored and _not_ look at this child.

He made her sick, this little boy, made her sick with his too thin, too beautiful face and too blonde hair that flopped uselessly into too blue, too fragile eyes. He raked talons into her back with his sad, broken expression and humbled, quivering tone. The very sight of him made her stomach knot, her skin go clammy; the repulsive taste of bile rise up in her throat, flood her mouth, twist her lips. There was nothing more upsetting than this odd, unexpected intrusion in her life.

A little boy. Such a curse—

_What a blessing. _

He was smothering her, after all, without meaning, without knowledge, with nothing but a silly memory that was not his own.

_A memory. A memory full of white lace and pretty pink pearls, of sweetness and bitterness, of life and death. A memory he embodied. A memory all about him. _

Andromeda rubbed her temples tiredly, his words slipping in despite her neglect. His inquires were a tentative stream of murmurs, crawling quietly into her ears like a demented lullaby. The impulse to embrace him was almost as strong as the impulse to smack him.

Would he even bleed, if she smacked him? Did children like him bleed—?

"Have you ever seen it, Mommy? Heaven? What's it like—"

He was her little boy and she loved him.

"Shut up!" Andromeda moaned, and she felt her hand fling the bottle in his direction. It landed with an ugly, tinkling shatter. "I don't—I don't even understand what you're saying! Heaven's for dead people! Are you dead—are you—are you—are you?"

Later tonight, when the moon has cast its silver shadow across dilapidated buildings and the shards of her glass bottle glitter sickly green in the dark, Andromeda will stagger to his bedroom and whisper through the crack in the door. She will tell him that heaven was a beautiful place, but a place difficult to reach, because it teetered on a mountain. High up in the clouds. A wonderful place for people who suffer. For people like him.

A place where there was no wicked chorus of her voice, her words.

_"Are you dead—are you—are you—are you?" _

Was he dead?

Andromeda heard a slight rustling, a muffled breath, and with an odd jolt realized that the child was crying, his little fist pressed against his mouth. Her throat tightened, listening to the stifled, hushed sobs, almost seeing the eyelids flutter over pale, pastel blue orbs in an attempt to blink back moisture. Something about it made her joints tense, her heart pump angrily in her chest. He was crying. Her little boy was crying though he pretended not to be.

With a most hurried, fleeting glimpse at his face, she saw that his resistance came to no avail; fat, cloudy tears were slipping from his eyes and dribbling over the gash across his nose.

The gash. Andromeda's lips fell into a subtle frown, a small pain touching a heart that had slowed to a sluggish, weary beat. The gash. The gash?

Her fingers curled over the coarse folds of her skirt. She bit her lip, struggling with her intoxicated thoughts and grappling with half-forgotten memories she kept locked in forbidden boxes.

For one truly frightening, icy moment, Andromeda could not recall anything at all, from the day the boy was born to the name they were supposed to call him. But in an instant it came flooding back to her—a painful, sickeningly vivid tumble of memory—and she remembered.

Lucas had knifed him last night. She could see it now, almost relive it: a wretched spiral of events that began with her frozen in the doorway, clutching at her skirts, watching a tall man with dark hair knock fists into her son until the glint of cold metal flashed. Then a scream, a splash of red blood.

Her husband. The knife. The blood.

The gash.

Oh.

It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but it disturbed her nonetheless, despite her attempts to remain aloof and unaffected. Perhaps it was the sight of red blood, its dazzling hue, how bright and incredibly ugly it was.

_Or perhaps it was because her baby was special, precious, and she couldn't stand the pain. _

The scene had faded soon after, broke away, just as her vision had broke away, into a thousand shimmering black particles that blinded her and made her dizzy. She remembered the child falling, her husband leering, the shimmering particles netting around her in a solid sheet of perpetual darkness.

When Andromeda awoke, faint and dizzied further, the room had been empty, apart from her presence and the unearthly splatter of rose-colored liquid on the rug. She recalled fever, clamminess, a chill that made her pull sweat-damp clothes closer to a shivering frame. She had stumbled on weak legs to the boy's bedroom, slumping against his door, heaving long, labored breaths that stabbed her lungs.

"Love," Andromeda remembered calling, softly. "It's Mommy, love. Everything's okay. Everything's okay. Mommy won't let him hurt you anymore. Please come out. Mommy won't hurt you…"

So the door had creaked open and there was her boy standing over the threshold: a disturbed image of bloody blonde bangs and weak blue eyes and tattered clothes ripped from abuse. His mouth was brittle. His eyes were glassy. His little white hand rested on the doorknob, his face a taut display of deep-seeded vulnerability and very frail hope.

Andromeda wanted to hold him close at that moment. To gather him in her arms—be a _true _mother—and stroke hair streaked coppery with red, sing sweet lullabies, whisper gentle tidings. She wanted to wrap him up in deep slumber, like a blanket, safe, secure, and wipe away every tear that clung to his lashes.

Instead, the sight of him stirred an old bitterness within her, an ancient poison, and the demon sneered through her, screamed, and made her leave him sobbing in the doorway.

He was her little boy and she loved him.

Another door swung open now—the entrance to a distorted home—and Andromeda turned in time to see her husband stroll in, a handsome man with raven hair and dark eyes that made her want to die. She felt the little boy draw a quick breath and scamper closer to her side.

Andromeda pursed her lips. Stupid child.

_She couldn't protect him. _

Her husband, Lucas, swept hid cold, glittering gaze over the sad scene spread out before him—the ravaged wife clutching her empty hands together, the glass on the floor, the nervous child grasping at her coarse skirts—and smiled.

Those eyes glittered more as they fell upon the child that wasn't his.

"What's wrong, kid?" He chided in a slow, pleasant drawl. "The monster under your bed hasn't eaten you yet? Don't worry," He grinned like he was the monster under the bed. "He always hungry for children who aren't supposed to be alive; they taste the best."

The boy didn't respond, didn't even tremble, though he pressed himself closer to his mother's knees. The action, somehow, only possessed Andromeda with the vicious desire to bat him away. How annoying it was to have this fragile youth hover so near to her, grabbing at her skirts, begging silently for a shelter that would never come!

Andromeda had never protected him before. Why did he always cling to her?

She made the mistake of averting her eyes, and Lucas finally took notice to her.

"Hey, baby," he called out in his drawl. "What's got you so down? Another failed affair, huh? Man left you again? That's _too _bad," He trilled the words with an evident pleasure, then dropped his voice to a low whisper. "Guess no one's gonna save you after all."

Andromeda kept her gaze locked steadfast on the wall ahead of her, studying the fissures that riddled the dull plaster, the graying paint that peeled from decaying panels. She pretended she was that wall, barren, gray and crumbling. Crumbling the way a temple crumbles when its pillars are too weak, or when the stone is too stale to support.

She was a crumbling pillar.

There was nothing odd or disturbing about her husband's jibe, as it was something he reminded her often, with lofty superiority, rather than with the hurt normally felt by a husband betrayed. Lucas was not concerned with her lack of loyalty. In fact, he seemed to find the situation almost comical—for the man that Andromeda had, quite nearly, run off with had eventually abandoned her for his rich home far away, leaving her with the cruelty of an abusive husband and the baggage of a dysfunctional blonde child.

ADHD. Dyslexia. How could a child whose father was…_special_ have so many inborn problems?

Lucas said these words to her not out of punishment, but because each time the statement was made her eyes became glassier, her soul more distance, and another piece of herself would die. He said it because it made it a little more difficult to breathe, a little harder to ignore the boy huddled at her feet.

Andromeda's stomach crawled with nausea, but the tapestry in her mind wove itself anyway, full of bright colors: a young elfish man with mischievous eyes and a playful grin that made her heart melt. He was lean and tall and could jog for many hours, longer than she thought possible, almost as if there were little white wings attached to the heels of his shoes.

Andromeda blinked and found herself staring at a different smile, a darker one, inches from her face and drenching her body in cold dread. She didn't want any pain now, any red; she didn't want the mottled black bruises and aching soreness and lingering stiffness that paralyzed a body if Lucas fell to his whims of anger.

She didn't want memories of a life that withered away when a man with winged shoes flew away.

Lucas normally fell to his whims of anger.

Her husband was speaking, dark words, poisonous words, but she couldn't hear them over the rush of memories that flooded her thoughts, the feel of a child's hands gripping at her skirts. She wished the boy would stop. She wished he would go away, as his father had gone away. She wished his shoes, tattered, frayed, and muddied, would sprout little white wings so he could fly away.

_Shoes with wings…white wings…angel wings…_

A cold hand clamped on her forearm, tightly, and she saw Lucas's tunnel-black eyes boring down into her, his lips peeled back far in a snarl. There was no amusement in his heavy drawl now, just a precarious edge of anger that made her heart freeze mid-beat.

"_I don't want this. I don't want memories." _

"Not answering, sweet?" He remarked in a growl, shaking her whole body with a twitch of his arm. She felt weak. "Not answering when I speak to you? Now, what sort of gratitude is _that_ after I've been working all day? Maybe I should teach you to a lesson—"

He raised his hand, and her eyes became dull empty stones, like her heart.

"No!"

The voice that piped up was pathetic; a high, cracked cry emitted from lips that shut themselves quickly and buried into the skirts of a stone-eyed mother. Andromeda could feel the boy trembling as he pressed into her side, tiny hands clutching for support and guidance—encourage, perhaps—at the very least a shadow of sympathy.

She gave none. Her eyes were vacant as they looked past her husband's face, to a faded wall, seeing ghosts that were not really there: ghosts of men with elfish smiles, of shoes with fluttering wings, of pretty glass cups filled with red, red wine.

A palace on a mountain.

Such a pretty dream.

"What'd you just say, kid? _Luke. _Did you just say _'no?' _You're a big boy now, so you can vouch for this—"

He called her a word that wasn't her name.

"D-don't…don't talk that way…about Mommy!" the child squeaked between frightened gasps. "She—she—she's a good Mommy! Don't be bad. Don't make Mommy cry again. You always make her sad and hurt. G-go—go away! Mommy doesn't like you."

Andromeda's hands were ice over her skirts, limp things that felt nothing even as she swept them across the top of the boy's sandy head. Though her gaze never left the wall, she felt the child jerk his head toward her excitedly. She rarely ever showed any form of appreciation; the faintest display of affection thrilled him.

Truthfully, she did not know what had spurred on the gesture. Something in that little voice, those words, made Andromeda's heart throb with a painful, choking sentiment. She couldn't describe it. A shimmering blackness was crowding in the corners of her eyes again, fogging her mind, like she was about to lose consciousness. Andromeda imagined herself slumping against the chair, toppling to the floor in a whoosh of frayed skirts. She would wake hours later with the boy bleeding next to her.

Her boy. Her boy.

_No. _What was happening to her? Why did he make her feel this way?

Her husband merely cocked his head, laughing.

"Do you know what pathetic means, kid? It's a word we use for little boys like you, who risk their necks for mothers who would just as easily throttle them in their sleep. Remember the story I told you about Mommy? You were just a mistake she made, something she wants to forget. One day while she's combing your hair, she's gonna throw a rope around your neck and pull. _Hard." _

Andromeda stared rigidly at the wall ahead of her. Ghosts.

"That's not true!" the child wailed desperately, though his voice shook like he had considered it. "That's not true, you're lying—you're lying—"

Andromeda could almost picture the fire flaring in Lucas' eyes, deep shadowy flame that licking at his dark irises, climbing high with a hunger that could only be sated by pain.

"You think I'm lying, _Luke?_ Tsk. Tsk. Poor baby…"

Luke. Lucas. Luke. Lucas. What was the difference between those two names?

One quaked at his mother's knees while the other towered with a knife in his pocket.

Luke. Lucas. What was the difference?

"I don't like you," the child spoke lowly. "You're a bad man. Go away. Leave us alone."

The little voice dragged through the air with a certain gravity, a weight his former retorts had been bereft of; there was firmness in these words, a melancholy, an imperceptive fear but sound stoutness in what he said.

The child fixed Lucas with a stare as powerful as his weak, misty eyes could muster—a shambled boy in rags, his face sallow and bangs ragged, falling limply over the cut across his nose. He was as fragile as glass, with mere paper for skin, white and flimsy, and a little heart about the size of a hummingbird fluttering in his chest.

Lucas frowned at the condemnation, his patience worn. His hand slid to his pocket.

"Giving me an attitude," he affirmed coldly. "Let's repeat last night—shall we? I'll show you what happens to stupid little boys who obviously want to die—"

Andromeda's heart was suddenly pounding in her chest, so hard and fast it racked her whole body with its tremors. She thought the entire room must be thudding along with the contractions. It was an unpleasant sensation, a painful one, a panicked beating that filled her chest with a lingering ache. She did not want to look, but her eyes were drawn away from the ghosts on the wall, to the little boy by her skirts.

She looked up and saw windows.

Frail, pastel blue windows that stood for the child's eyes, still clinging to a decaying innocence, revealing what appeared to be a long stretch of untouched sky. They were like outlets to another life, another person.

Windows to a god.

Andromeda felt a sickness creep up her throat and flood her mouth with its bitterness. She did not want to think these things, feel these things, but her eyes were now locked on the boy, who had his own gaze locked on her husband, who was glaring back with an overcoming darkness.

"Wait…"

She tried to speak, but her voice was a mere whisper that fell amongst the shadows.

_Luke, Lucas—_

"You want a beating, huh?"

_A man with winged shoes—_

It was difficult to breathe.

_White lace; she wears a dress of white lace—_

"I'll teach you to be afraid."

_An elfish smile; he makes her heart stop—_

No more voices. Only the cries of a fallen child.

_A set of pink pearls, glimmers in the moonlight—_

The child was crying.

_The light caches a glass; shards of sunshine dance—_

She heard cruel laughter. Pain. Red pain.

_The wine is rosy, red, red, like a flower—_

The child was crying.

_Where is he going—?_

A hand swung by, missed her, collided with another face.

_Where is he going—?_

The child still cried.  
_Pearls clatter to the floor, like droplet of rain water—_

A darkness wrapped around her brain. She thought she might pass out.

_A palace on a mountain—_

Desperate fingers reached out for her lifeless hand.

_He left for a palace on a mountain—_

"Stop it!"

Andromeda fought through the bindings of memories, struggling to keep her head over the tide of pretty images that had left her to wither. The present came crashing down upon her all at once, an ugly gray spatter, choked with uncorked beer bottles and husbands who grinned with cold eyes.

But then there was her boy, small, innocent; the embodiment of a past that would never return.

At his touch she felt a charge run through her, a vicious impulse, and the demon clicked its talons a little too loudly in her ears.

It happened in a blur. One moment the child was tugging at her fingers, the next he was sprawled across the floor.

Lucas sneered. "Good job."

Andromeda did not answer, did not look at him; her gaze instead fell upon the boy who lay crumpled at her feet, breathing slowly, his eyes closed. A flurry of panic closed around her heart.

How had he gotten there?

_What had she done…? _

Later tonight, when the moon has cast its silver shadow across dilapidated buildings and the shards of her glass bottle glitter sickly green in the dark, Andromeda will stagger to his bedroom and whisper through the crack in the door. She will sing a soft lullaby about winged shoes and never ask for forgiveness. He will sit with his ear pressed against the wood and listen intently, accepting an apology that would never come.

They both knew it was there.

"_Heaven. What is heaven, Mommy? What does it look like?"_

"_You."_


	2. Promise

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Rick Riordan does. (And that goes for the first chapter too)

**Author's Note:** Hello, any readers who've stumbled across this. I just wanted to take this space to thank you for reading my story. I've written plenty of fanfiction, but this is my first Percy Jackson fic. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter Two

Promise

_Staggering, tripping, stumbling, he makes it to the bedroom door and pulls it wide open. He falls into the room roughly, his breathing haggard, his tearing eyes blurred and seeing things that are not really there; dark, misshapen images that prowl in the shadows. _

_He collapses in a flurry of tattered clothes. _

_He is twelve years old. _

Luke sat with his back pressed against the door, feeling the rough wood rub against his bare skin, the warm, pulsating ooze of blood drip down his sides. He couldn't comprehend the sporadic spiral of thoughts that whirled about his brain, the rustling, shrieking, clattering of outside, or the odd glimpses of an ugly, gray room he received whenever his teary eyes blinked open. All he knew was that his body was on fire; every inch of him felt battered and bruised, torn and bleeding, screaming with an agonized torment that would last forever.

This pain would last forever.

But no…Luke sucked a sharp breath and shifted his body into a more upright position. He had weathered this before, perhaps even worse on occasion. He had grown accustom to the unpleasant realities of living in this household. First the stinging hurt would fade to a dull ache, then a subtle stiffness, then finally to a gruesome white scar, which would fade also, if he was lucky enough.

Luke was hardly ever lucky.

His back slid a few inches down the door, grinding mercilessly against the splintered wood, and he gritted his teeth. The shirt was slick with blood and he had tossed it off, but now he regretted the absence of cloth on his torso, however thin and soiled. It would have served fairly well as a barrier between his wounds and the coarse wooden door.

A part of him figured he should reach out and grab it, but he couldn't move. His limbs felt frozen, burning in agony, so raw on his skin that the slightest motion directed his hazy, floundering thoughts to the already unavoidable pain.

This was routine; he had to avoid it.

Avoid thinking about the torture that lanced up and down his sides, the skin puckered in ugly black-and-blue bruises, the warm puddles of ruby that pooled in gaudy droplets at his feet

_Gaudy. Blood was so bright, so vivid, so similar to the paint that splattered an artist's pallet— only wretched, because it wasn't true. Just something ugly disguised with pretty color—the color of roses, of cherries—but it was too sickening, too intense, too dramatic to contain the rich beauty of natural things. Blood was pretend. Blood was gaudy._

Don't think. Don't move. That was the routine.

Luke knocked his head a little too forcefully against the door—resulting in a clear, ringing sensation that made his brain vibrate—and let his breath sag in his throat, his chest heave in feeble, wispy gasps.

_Okay_, Luke reasoned through the pain._ I can get through this. No problem. I've done it before. Yeah, I'll live, and by tomorrow—_

"He's going to _die!" _

Luke jolted, his heart thrown into a frantic fluttering that stole all the breath from his lungs. The voice shattered overhead, like the peals of a cracking bell as it tumbled to a hard, unforgiving floor.

Had he just imagined that? Whose voice did that belong to, so shrill and strident it cut through the still air? It seemed familiar, but Luke's memory fumbled and he could not grasp it.

"I _want _him to die—it would be better—it would be better—so much better—"

A chorus now, an endless stammer, laced with shaking hysteria and a whispering sort of pain that was different from the sensation aching in his limbs.

It was like the pain in his heart; an agony that truly did last forever.

Who was screaming—?

The voice sounded again, the ringing of a broken bell, and Luke's reeling mind suddenly stopped, halted; froze on an image he did not want to see. A memory he did not want to remember. He willed it desperately to pass over him, but the picture only sharpened, the dying grayness of it brightening into a sickening vividness that stung his eyes, so that he could see every detail, every aspect, every element.

It was an ugly image, yet an ironic one, for the man within in seemed so handsome, princely, in his neatly pressed suit and wave of dark hair. Yes, quite charming, but for the cold, eternal, yawning tunnel-eyes that glinted from his sockets, trapping you in their endless labyrinth.

And the bloody fingernails. The bloody fingernails were ugly.

Luke was in the picture too, a dull reddish smear, crumpled on the floor with the hair in his eyes. His body was shaking, and his breath rattling in his chest, but he stared up defiantly at his oppressor anyway, ignoring the trepidation that rose up in his throat. The pain was only tingling in his arms now, not burning, though he thought a flurry of stars were blinking before his eyes.

But neither the man nor Luke was the main focus of the image. His mother was.

She was a small pinprick in the distance; though undeniably clear in his reverie: ghostlike in her pale white nightgown and loose, unbound auburn hair. This was the way his mother would remain, he knew, no matter what memory he looked back upon. A thin, wasted, beautiful woman garbed in clingy bodices and billowy skirts, her hair dark and cut at jagged ends while she stared ahead, with empty, dead eyes.

Dead eyes that didn't care.

Luke gripped at the roots of his blonde hair, bowing down so low into his knees that he felt his aching muscles scream. That man—her husband—was insane, his fingernails were bloody, and he kept clawing and kicking and punching, but she just watched with dead eyes that didn't care.

"I wish he would die—_I do—I do_—I'll make it happen—I'll make him better…"

There was a scuffling sound, a bark of cool laughter, then another sob.

"Do it, then. Kill him. I don't care. It's not like I'd press charges."

The retort made Luke's skin crawl, not because of the content, but because of the speaker. He imagined bloody fingernails. He shuddered.

The wailing ceased abruptly, followed by a tense silence that was broken only by the ragged breathing of someone truly desperate. Luke heard the sound of a hand groping for an object, without waver, without conviction, striding toward his door in a steadied, determined gait.

His body turned numb. He felt his limbs go cold and heavy, a case of ice enclosing over a heart that had stopped beating. He straightened his aching back, held his breath, his eyes widening and his throat constricting.

Soft footfalls, the quiet, husky breath of a woman as she neared the doorway.

But she wouldn't—_she wouldn't—_

"Love?"

Mom.

Luke heard her body crash against the door—felt it, too, as the door shook on its rickety hinges, shuddered against her weight—and listened as she murmured through the rusted keyhole. He could imagine her, garbed in her crumpled nightgown, hair hanging in lank, red strands, eyes pale and haunted. He knew what she would say.

She only loved him behind closed doors.

"Love?" she repeated, in a breathy, whispering voice. "It's me, Mommy. I—I'm here. I'm here, love. I want to make it better."

Luke hurt all over, and the pain had nothing to do with the bruises that mottled his complexion.

Once upon a time, he would believe the words he heard through closed doors, for his mother sang them in a lullaby so sweet and mystical it must have been magic. A beautiful, tantalizing melody that bewitched his senses; she spun a dream with those words.

It was a dream woven from the golden threads of his deepest desires, the silver of the moonshine he looked to for hope, the dazzling sparks of a fallen star he'd wished upon.

He opened the door and the spell was broken.

The golden threads snapped, the moonshine vanished, and the falling stars sputtered and blinked into shadows. The door swung outward and the woman before him was no longer an enchantress of dreams, but a cold, ravaged beauty that shook with hatred, blame—a resentment she held for him, and him alone.

Sometimes she would hit him, other times she would scream, but the worst was when her lips twisted in that bitter line and she simply walked away, without a backward glance.

Why?

She only loved him behind closed doors.

Luke's voice was a hoarse cry. "What do you want?"

"Love…" She was crying on the other end. "I want to make it better. Don't you understand? This will make it better. You'll be safe and unharmed, after this. Won't it be better? Won't it be easier?"

There was ice in his stomach. His throat was dry. He couldn't breathe.

_She wouldn't—she wouldn't—_

"So you're gonna do it, huh?" He looked down at his hands, white palms scraped with red. "Right now? If I open the door you're gonna—"

"No! I mean—" Her face was pressed against the door; he could feel it, see it in his mind. "Wouldn't it be better? Easier? Love, don't you want to—"

Luke bent over his knees, his stomach in knots, his eyes seeing nothing and everything all at the same time. It was his ADHD, he thought. His heart was thundering; his senses were sharp, acute, aware of every small detail his eyes flitted across. Every corner of the dull, drab room came into focus, from the worn mattress to the blood on the floor. His mother came into focus, also—her choked breathing, her warbling voice, her trembling through the door as she leaned against it.

"No, Ma," he said in a croak. "I don't wanna die. I wanna _live—_I wanna_ live—_I wanna_ live—"_

With each reply, he banged his head against the doorframe, making it rattle, making his head ring with a terrible pain that resounded throughout his entire body.

_"I wanna live—I wanna live—I wanna live—I—want—to—live—"_

There were words leaving his lips, pouring from his mouth in a panicked flood, but he couldn't understand them; the emotion they conveyed was too thick, too poignant. He couldn't feel the rush of stinging hurt that came from pounding his head against a wooden door. He couldn't hear the words his mother was crying on the other end, slumped against the keyhole. A single drive was moving him forward, instilled within the very roots of his being, however battered and abused: the drive to life, no matter how rocky, twisted, and painful the road of life was.

Everything around him was a sickening whirl of colorless, soundless, sightless feeling. She needed to understand.

Somewhere along the endless cycle of pain and choked words, he realized his eyes were wet. He was unsure when the factor had first become evident, but it was obvious now. A hot, blinding sheen that burned the corners of his eyes.

_Dammit, he wasn't crying, was he? He couldn't cry; he couldn't. It was young, it was babyish—_

Luke didn't know anything anymore; nothing but the heavy feelings rolling off his tongue, pouring from the shards of his soul, ramming his dizzied head into a hard wooden door.

Making him cry.

But he wasn't crying. Not really, not really…

"_I wanna live—I wanna live—I wanna live—live—live…"_

It happened in a flash, so quick his brain didn't have time to adjust. One moment his head was colliding with the coarse surface of the door, and the next there was the sensation of falling.

The door had disappeared.

Or at least, someone had pulled it back. All he knew was that he was falling now, tumbling swiftly and abruptly, and no one was going to catch him. His head was surging backwards too fast for him to stop himself. It was going to smash against the ground. It was going to hurt. He wasn't afraid of the pain, but he was mildly disappointed that he would not get to wipe the tears from his eyes.

But his head never hit the floor; instead it thudded against something soft and shaking, something that smelt like roses and alcohol. His mother.

_She was holding him?_

_Why…? How…?_

_The knife—where was the knife? He'd heard her grab it. Wasn't she…_

_Wasn't she going to kill him?_

Arms were encircling him, holding him close; rocking him in the gentle, rhythmic way a mother rocks a child. It seemed unnatural to Luke; like he had fallen into the arms of a stranger—a woman who had simply stolen his mother's face.

Her voice was in his ear. Her face was in his hair.

"I want you to live," she breathed softly. "Everyday, I want you to live. Even though it's harder this way; bloodier this way. I—_I_ want you to live, but aren't you…aren't you tired of the violence? I hate the color red. It stains everything. My face, my hair, my eyes…I see it when I look in the mirror, see it when I look at you. But you protect me, love, and wipe up the color red. You hold me in your arms. I want you to live but tomorrow I'll hate you. Tomorrow I'll hate you again."

Luke didn't speak. Didn't breathe.

Listened.

"I _do_ hate you—sometimes, all the time—but only because I care about you. Don't you understand, love? I hate you because I care so much. Care so much that I have to—have to…" Her voice sounded choked, like she was crying. "It hurts to care so much. I want you to live, but it hurts. You're stained with the red, but only because you wipe it up. Stand your ground. Take my place. You hold me in your arms like you want to protect me. Do you? I…I think you even love me. Truly, I believe it. You love me, the way a son loves a mother. You love me. Don't you?

I don't think anyone else ever loved me. I don't think I've ever known love—so mystical and fairytale-like—except maybe when I met your father, but I don't know if he loved me. I was married to another man—_that_ man, the one downstairs—when I met your father. He told me he loved me. I loved him. But love isn't love when one person is pretending, and I think he was pretending. He was supposed to whisk me away from this unhappy marriage and make everything better. He could've done it, too, love. He could do anything. He was special. But he didn't save me…he just left me with you, and now you're all I got. I thought _you_ might make him stay, but he left anyway."

The woman leaned in, her voice like a song, whispering secrets into his ear.

"I won't call you by your name, because it makes me think of that man downstairs. Luke. Lucas. They sound the same to me. Luke. Lucas. I didn't name you," Her grip tightened on his shoulders. "I can't look at you either, because your face reminds me of that man who left us. The one with little wings on his heels, love. He had elf-eyes, just like you. I hate you for many reasons, but one reason is because you look at me with those elf eyes.

But even with those eyes, _you_ care about me, though you have no wings on your feet. You love me. You'll protect me, forever. And maybe—_maybe, maybe_—if we're strong enough and brave enough and living enough, your father will come back and take us away. He could fly us to a palace on a mountain, where everyone wears white silk and drinks red wine. Wouldn't that be lovely, darling? Red, red wine. Wouldn't that be lovely?"

Luke listened, listened and breathed—long, slow pulls of air, like an asthmatic fearful that his lungs may close up if he took in a gasp too sharp. Whereas his ADHD had made everything painfully visible a moment ago, now the whole world seemed blurred now. The weight of his mother's words were rushing over him in an incomprehensible tide, carrying him away; drowning him in deep, desperate depths.

He didn't understand.

He felt his mother's arms around him—a sensation he had never experienced—and felt the odd thrumming of her panicked heart—a heart that for so long seemed dead—fluttering in a rapid, violent succession, like a frenzied bird.

But did she love him or did she hate him? He could smell roses and alcohol, hear her singing voice in his ear, but the question remained unanswered.

Did she love him or did she hate him?

And a palace on a mountain? Red wine and white silk? She was crazy.

Luke felt a tear hit his cheek, but it wasn't his. His eyes looked up and found his mother sobbing into his hair, her thin white fingers clutching at the skin of his bare shoulders. He stared at her, face obscured in his own hair, nightgown frayed, hanging limp on a body that was worn and wasted. Bruised and battered. Just like him.

She was so weak, so pitiful, so beautiful yet tragic as she wept desperate tears into his sandy hair. She was fragile, delicate, a glass statue placed in his fumbling hands.

But he would no longer allow them to fumble. They would hold her close now, shield her, and meld together the fissures that had already been driven into her vulnerable, frail glass form.

She was right, after all. He did love his mother—more than anything—loved a woman who drifted in pale nightgowns, screamed that she hated him, and threw empty bottles. Loved this woman dearly. And he was going to protect her.

"_Please," _she wept quietly, brokenly. _"Don't let me fall. Don't ever let me fall." _

Luke imagined the woman with scarred feet and bloodied hands, attempting to claw her way up a painfully high mountain that spiraled to the heavens. The very tip was obscured by a wispy circlet of cloud—almost like a fading crown, or a thinning halo—and he somehow knew she would never make it. If he ever let her fumble her way up this mountain, her sore foot would alight upon a rock too weak, and she would crumple along with it. She would fall.

Luke would not let her climb this mountain. He would never allow his mother's soul to fall to the darkness that lay in the shadow of an exclusive paradise.

In most situations, a mother cares for a child. Well, now a child was caring for his mother.

Luke felt his heart swell in his battered chest; swell with a love so strong it _was_ painful, just like the care his mother had described. Caring so much it hurt. He fixed his thoughts on the man she described—the one with elfish eyes and apparent "wings" on his feet—and knew he was never coming back. Whoever he was, no matter how rich or powerful, he had abandoned them to the cruelty of a dark-haired man with bloody fingernails.

But it was alright; they shared eyes but not souls. Luke would not be like his father. He would hold Mommy, protect her.

He would never leave her.

_'A palace on a mountain…with white silk and red, red wine.'_

"Is that what heaven looks like, Mom?" he whispered in a quiet, even tone; too quiet for her to hear over her sobbing. "A palace on a mountain? Well, let me tell you something—no, let me _promise_ you something: I'm going to make you a new heaven. A better one. I'll tear down the old heaven stone by stone and construct a new one from its ruins. A heaven just for you, only you; a paradise you've never even imagined. A paradise where you don't need a man with winged shoes to fly you too. I'll make it for you, Mom, no matter how hard. And in this heaven, you'll wear clothes finer than silk, drink the reddest red wine. And you won't fall off this mountain, because my arms will be around it, protecting you. You'll see, Mom…it's going to be a new life, a new age, and you're going to be a part of it. Not just a part, but the focus. The focus of this new heaven."

She never heard him, just held him tight, and cried into his hair.

**Author's Note:** A virtual cookie for anyone who notices the incredibly obvious connection between what Luke says to his mom and what he eventually does in the series. Again, thanks for reading. Please review!


	3. Guardian

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Rick Riordan does.

**Author's Note:** Thanks to all those who commented! It really keeps me going. Okay…so I know this chapter has a similar set-up to the last, but it's necessary to establish the last element of Luke's relationship with his mother. I promise you that chapter four is different. And chapter five is really, really different.

Chapter Three

Guardian

_He's decided that he's her guardian angel. _

_He leaves school today annoyed but not disappointed; trekking home with a backpack full of failed papers he doesn't care about. The tinny voice of a teacher pesters his thoughts for a short while, but he brushes it away as a finger would brush the away the web of a spider. Just clutter in his brain. _

_He jogs up the stoop and comes to a halt when he hears a sound—a scream, echoing from down the halls. The crash of a body, the bark of a man. He rips open the front door and finds his mother in the kitchen, her face hidden beneath her hands. Lucas stands over her. _

_His mind gets hazy and he can't think straight. He's angry with himself for attending classes when he obviously should have stayed home with his mother. His mouth shouts words he can't hear over the roar in his ears, but Lucas turns angrily, and his mother slips away._

_His last thought before the pain explodes is that his mother is safe. For now. _

_He is thirteen years old. _

Leaning on a kitchen floor, his knees bruised against the tiles, his face pressed against the cold stone. Luke could feel the awkward thrumming of his heart as it jumped in his torso. He could hear the grating rasp of his breath as it rushed from his lips. He could see the blur of blood in his eyes, warm and faint and pulsing.

The room was wide and vacant, with withered gray cabinets dusted in cobwebs and a corroded old sink spotted with rust and water stains. Right now the facet ran; a long thin stream of muddy brown water that hissed as it hit the bottom of the sink, which was cluttered with dishes. Broken ones, soiled ones, unused ones…the water sloshed over them in sluggish streams that dirtied all that was already tarnished.

Luke would have to clean those, eventually. No one else would.

The refrigerator was a plain, ugly cube with a flickering light and weak coolness that let most food spoil. It was an insignificant contribution to the kitchen, quite easy to overlook, unlike the rickety backdoor that swung wildly on its hinges in the rain.

The door!

A faded white and stabbed with wide cracks, the door provided the only escape from the damnable, confined prison of a dilapidated home. Out the door, and down the crumbling marble steps, a long hilly meadow yawned on forever, over acres of land, like a tantalizing freedom. Yes, perhaps the field was sparse and brown with its tall itchy stalks of waving wheat and spiny huddles of bramble, but it was endless, and it was uncultivated. When the rain came, it whipped through the weeds and the stalks and the dirt so that everything seemed alive, fresh and vigorous, moving with a throbbing spirit that Luke felt but did not own.

The door was open now, the rain howled in, but he did not seek freedom.

In the very corner of the room stood a table, small, stout, and ancient.

And at the table sat his mother.

She was a disturbed image to behold, with wild red hair that hung lank before pale eyes like a phantom. There was a bloody handprint on her cheek, blinding in the dim gray of the room, trickling a scarlet river down her neck to her jutting collarbone. She was painfully thin. Anyone whose eyes fell upon her would see the inherent beauty within her, the curling lashes, the dark full lips, the large tilted eyes; but it was a beauty wasted on the face of someone so ravaged by pain and insanity. She was a ghost, in her whispering black nightgown, tangled auburn knots, and a dripping red handprint.

She looked at her son.

"You…you did it…again…" A faint murmuring, like a music note.

He drew a rattled breath, his sore ribs screaming, and answered in a low, pained voice.

"Yeah, I did. I won't let anyone hurt you, Mom. I won't. I'm your guardian angel."

The words were thick in the air, the phantom with the bloody handprint gazing intently at the angel with no wings. Luke remained bent on the floor, a tide of blonde hair falling before glazed eyes. His body shuddered, imperceptibly, his knees sliding against the rough stone. He dropped a bit closer to the cold tiles. His face was tightened in a grimace, his lips pulled into a white line, but the woman did not notice. She had cast a heavy glare to the far end of the kitchen and would not see him.

"You keep throwing yourself away," Her voice was cold with detached disapproval. "You throw yourself away…"

The words were a blow to his ringing ears, so forceful he collapsed, suddenly, panting and cursing and praying all at the same time. He landed in a crash that woke up his senses, the floor freezing against his hot cheek, shooting darts of ice-fire through his entire body. His heart was thrown into a panicked flurry, his chest constricting in anguish.

Her image floated above Luke, a phantom, surreal, with words that echoed like a chorus, cutting his heart to pieces. She did not want him. She did not want her guardian angel.

The chorus of words rose to a crescendo, and so did the pain, hurting, hurting, so strongly he could not dispel it.

"Mom…"His response was a strangled cry. "I keep throwing—giving myself—for…to you…"

He trailed off weakly, looking to the woman whose eyes were shallow pools of frozen water. Her spindly hands had clutched themselves convulsively, her back upright, her gaze burning into the wall ahead of them.

Suddenly her lips twisted, as if she had tasted something bitter: a dramatic curve that contorted her entire face. Her expression turned fragile, the mask of stony indifference in shards at her feet; her dim eyes grew dimmer and her brows bent in a troubled thought.

She bowed over, her auburn hair streaming.

"How—_why—_are you doing this—to me? I can't stand it—I can't breathe—can't breathe—he's pulling me under, and I can't breathe, because you're _so—so—so—_why are you this to me? It hurts! It hurts and I don't want it—I don't want it—I don't want it!"

Her eyes became frantic, her hands trembled—she lurched to her feet abruptly as an anguished cry tore from her lips and echoed off the walls, her hands clawing at her hair, her face, red pooling with the redness of a bloody handprint. She gasped, screamed, fell to her knees in a billow of black skirts and groped for his shoulders with hard, pinching fingers.

Her face was close to him now, her breath on his face, the smell of roses and alcohol strong in his nostrils. Her nails ripped into his skin.

"Why are you doing this to me?" He felt himself being shaken. "Can't you see what this is doing—_to me? _You keep giving—and giving—and throwing yourself away, and I hate you so much that I can't breathe! Truly, I hate you—_an angel? _One with no wings! What good is that—what good?—what good? You'll always fall, and what a terrible way to die! People who fall break into bloody red clumps that are _ugly _and angels need to die beautifully—they drown—because drowning is so beautiful and I hate you…I hate you…"

Luke stared at her with dead eyes, feeling a strange emptiness on his back where wings should be, picturing her words in his head. Water. Clear, cool, and crystal. A fountain of sparkling blue water that poured over him in a flood and left him floating, drowning, in deep quiet depths.

Her hands were on his face now, her fingertips moist. There were marks on his shoulders, dripping where she clenched. It didn't hurt.

"Why…" her voice was a soft breath. "This hurts so much…Can you feel it? I hate you but I need you…I need you…I care and it hurts…Why are you doing this to me? Why are you making me hurt? My angel—_mine—_all mine and nobody else's. Keep being my guardian angel. I want you to be my guardian angel. I need it, but—but I don't—I don't need it, I don't want it, I hate it…With your blood on the floor and I care and its hurting…Just drown for me, drown, in a still pool all alone, because its so pretty, so tranquil…drown alone in the water. It's beautiful."

Luke was silent, but she pulled him closer, chuckling and sobbing.

"My guardian angel," she whispered. "You'll always protect me. I want that. I don't want it. Remember? A lullaby…"

Her head was in Luke's shoulder, her body shuddering as she ran a forceful hand through his tousled blonde locks. She yanked and pulled hard and it didn't hurt. He held his quivering mother close to him, wishing he could understand, guilty because her pain was his fault. Her pain was always his fault.

What good was an angel with no wings?

"Remember? A lullaby," Her voice was soft in his ear, humming. "A lullaby from myths and legends…thief child…"

Luke didn't think he knew anything about myths and legends, or remembered a lullaby procured from one, but his mother sang in a whispering voice that made him think of strange things. Ancient, pretty things he knew nothing of.

"_Hmm—hmm—hmm—_

_Remember a time—when water ran clean –_

_And the eyes—of a sky—in the morning—_

_There—through the streets—ran a—_

_Little—thief—boy—_

_With the eyes—of a sky—in the morning… _

_He ran— with a trinket—so shiny—_

_So new—in little—elf hands—_

_A little—thief boy—_

_With the eyes—of a sky—in the morning—_

_Look—at—him run—_

_My little—thief—boy… _

_Oooh—where is your father—? _

_Oooh—where—has he gone—? _

_To the merchants—the roads—_

_Oooh—he stole my poor heart—_

_And put it—in his pocket—_

_He runs—to the roads—_

_Oooh—_

_The merchants, _

_The thieves, _

_Oooh—my little—thief boy—"_

She gazed at him, questioning, hating, caring, and he wished he understood.

**Author's Note:** The whole drowning thing will be explained later on. Oh! And another virtual cookie to anyone who can connect Luke's mother's comment on falling to the…stuff…that happened in the third book. Thanks again for reading. Please review!


	4. Murder

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Rick Riordan does.

**Author's Note: **Whoa. I don't think I've ever updated this quick. These chapters were actually written in advance—something I rarely do. lol. Unfortunately, chapter five _hasn't _been written yet, so it will probably be a while until it's up. Still, please enjoy this chapter! (Although, it is a bit…disturbing…)

Chapter Four

Murder

_She watches her boy everyday, even if he doesn't know it._

_Today she watches as he drags himself through the back door, throws his bag against the wall, slides to the floor. His hand is in his hair and his face looks tired, those pale elf eyes staring ahead in the empty sort of way her own eyes sometimes stare. _

_He looks like his father._

_She watches as Lucas emerges, pulls him to his feet, and sneers something that is cruel and jibing. She knows she should do something, say something, but her feet are frozen in the doorway. _

_He looks like his father. _

_Lucas shoves him, and the boy counters, stumbling for balance and knocking a blow at his face. He misses. Lucas twists his arm; laughs. The sound makes her cringe but her feet still won't move. _

_He looks like his father. _

_The wrangle persists, her boy faltering and failing, and soon they are out the back door, fighting in the rain. The lightening flashes and she can't watch them anymore; only imagine a boy with elf-eyes being thrown like a rag-doll… _

_He looks like his father. _

_Her feet can't move, but she picks them up anyway, heavily, and edges to the doorway. She feels her hand grope for something cool and soothing in the kitchen draw. Her mind is a whirl of confused thought. _

_She waits until Lucas returns, hides by the cabinets, and darts out the door when he's gone. The cool something is still in her hands. She looks for her son and can't find him in the rain. _

_He is fourteen years old. _

Thunder crashed somewhere overhead, though her ringing ears heard none of it—the lightening in her eyes different from the sparks that struck the night sky.

She lifted a pale hand to the thrashing heavens, attempting to shield herself from the heavy sheet of rain that fell in a downpour, soaking her to the skin. She moved it slowly, testing the winds and the weather, the other arm loose at her side, fingering the weapon; it felt smooth, rough, ugly and fitting in her palm.

A streak of frail moonlight escaped from the clouds and flashed across the sleek surface. _So pretty. _

She glanced at the knife, its wide smiling curve biting into her skin, so that blood kissed silver steel. For a moment she watched the scarlet stain linger, drip down the blade like a dark ribbon, but then the rain came, in torrents, washing the red away in a swirl of diluted pink.

The rain washed everything away, cleansing her body.

It would wash her sins away too.

Her heart thundered harder than the rain.

She picked her way through a gray meadow in a storm, the wiry weeds clutching at her ankles and long skirts snagging on prickly bits of bramble. Her feet were bare and worn, wet with the muck of loose grass and muddied soil. It was difficult for her to discern much of anything in the weather, each wave of rain like a beaded veil, the droplets glittering like liquid diamond as they flew hard and heavy into her face. The dress was soaked, a coarse raggedy thing woven from spare threads, one sleeve hanging limp off her bony shoulder.

Her hair hung in auburn clumps about her hollowed cheeks, gaunt, reflecting the pronounced emptiness in pale phantom eyes. Her lips moved soundlessly, saying nothing, everything, searching for something she did not want to say. Her body moved without meaning, drifting as—she expected—a soul would drift across the Field of Asphodel, the meadow of the dead.

An odd quirk pulled the corner of plum lips. Where was she, exactly? Which meadow?

She tripped once, shamed, landing in a cloud of dirt and blood and rain. Her face was suddenly flecked with the filth of it, her hair matted with it, her lungs breathing it, her eyes seeing it. Her fingers ran along the coolness of a wet blade and she remembered which meadow she resided in.

_Not for long, darling, not for long. _

Soon her sins would be a diluted puddle in the dirt.

She gripped her weapon tighter and pressed forward, seeking for a glimpse of blonde hair or keen elfish eyes that reminded her of someone else. In her mind, dim, colorless, shadowed, she saw his image: the aftermath of a one-sided battle, motionless in the dirt, an odd assortment of broken dreams and wingless antics. It was nauseating in a beautiful way that made her want to vomit and hate him.

She brushed a ribbon of hair off her face and felt the ring on her finger.

His face was a flickering, black-and-white photo, a frozen image, choking her heart with feelings she did not want to have, painful feelings, full of deep affection and strong loath. He was out here, somewhere, and he was precious. He was out here, somewhere, and he was worthless.

She would retrieve him.

She would lose him.

_So pretty, so perfect, the blade, the wingless angel. _

She hoped the rain would not wash him away.

His sleeping form was cold beneath a tree, wrapped in the type of slumber that was not deep and comforting, but merely the fragile shell that ensnares you when the pain makes you see black stars. His face was slack, mottled with a line of bruises that knotted from his brow to his chin, conspicuous against the dramatic pallor of his skin. His hair was a sandy blonde tangle dripping with rain and some other diluted pink substance. His clothes were tattered, stained, rough garments frayed at the sleeves and hanging in loose strings. He reminded her of a dead doll—(beautiful, nauseating)—but for the wisp of white breath that curled from his lips, signifying life.

Her gaze fell upon him, clinical, lingering for a full moment before she broke.

Breaking was something she did in pieces, slowly, small cracks that snaked up a glass soul and weakened it, damaged it, placed it in a precarious position. How many shards of soul had been sliced apart, left to balance themselves against a solid whole, not yet broken? Fitted in like a puzzle piece that would not stay. How long until it crumpled? A delicate house of cards wavering in the wind. She had to move carefully, take in the breaking gradually, feel the soft slipping and sliding and shifting of the shards rather than a violent shatter of the soul.

She broke at a quiet pace for the sake of her sanity; her grasp on reality, for a full shatter would ruin her mind with the impact of its nightmare.

Now she broke entirely.

Broke because he could not see her, because he could not hear her, because he was there but wasn't there all at the same time. She broke open the forbidden boxes that locked forbidden treasures in shadowy corners, cold things, beautiful things, now spilling from her eyes in hot salty trails that mingled with the rain. She told him about the truths she stowed away like dark silk handkerchiefs, so alluring but terrible, because they were like nightmare sewn into cloth. Nightmares of memories, sewn into cloth. With his name on it.

She never lied—never;those words she spewed like venom, stammered in a flood heavier than rain. All those moments when her nails dug into his skin, her arms thrown him away: they were earnest moments. She never lied. Those were sincere, honest actions, every single one of them—except that they _were_ lies, all of them, after all, like the scarlet blood she let dribble down his neck. But that was obvious, really; she expected him to know that.

What was she saying? She was lying. She was lying.

She tipped her head under the branches of the dying willow, watching his faded form breathe in the gray air of the meadow. He was a wingless angel in the rain.

She was lying to him, lying with the truth.

The rain would wash her sins away.

She lost herself in a flood of pictures, staring at that prostrate form bleeding diluted blood into the earth. She lost herself to the picture of a man with dark, tunnel-eyes and bloody fingernails that were clipped; not clean. She lost herself to scattered shards of bottles thrown at a small boy who cried in a huddle, a woman who sung soft lullabies about winged shoes through a crack in the door. She lost herself to knotted blonde hair, hair matted with blood, and tender white skin, skin bruised with dark blotches. She lost herself to an angel that whispered of new heavens and mopped up endless red with his hands. She lost herself to little butterfly feet that kicked inside her while she waited to see the face of someone that was entirely hers.

She lost herself to hate.

She lost herself to—

_To—_

_'No, I don't want this, I don't want this. I don't want to feel this way. I've felt this before and it hurts, it hurts, it kills…'_

He was her guardian angel, shielding her with his body because he had no wings to wrap around her.

But he was more than that, so much more, everything, and nothing, as insignificant as little butterfly feet that kicked in her abdomen. Just a twisted dream, a lovely nightmare.

_Wait. That's not right, that's not right—_

She dropped to her knees, numb as her soul broke, grasping tightly at the blade, searching frantically for something she could not find in his face. The rain howled overhead and the lightening made her eyes dance, but the hair hanging over them made her ghostlike, blinded.

It was flooding up now, a bitter taste, gurgling in her throat, choking her, frightening her. An emotion of lies and truths, lying truth. She tried to swallow it down but it overwhelmed her in waves of nausea; her body wracked with tremors, her breaths forced from her lungs in ragged pants that painted the air with steam. Her fingers clutched at the blade.

She felt herself lurch forward, sobbing, the succumbed to silence.

Amidst the pitter-patter of falling rain, all went oddly quiet, the lightening a black-and-white shadow, the thunder a muted cry. Her face was suddenly inches from his, so close she could feel the frail shell of his breathing on her chin, so close the tears—(or was it rainwater?)—dripping from her lashes fell on his cheek, so that he was crying too.

She looked at him and felt the bitter taste rising in her throat, the ghost of unwanted emotion stirring in her splitting glass soul.

She said it once, in the faintest of whispers, and would never repeat the words, the name, ever again.

"…Luke…I love you…"

The words unleashed a panic, and her breaking was finally complete.

She had always imagined the peak of her shattering like watching the shards of her soul burst into tiny fireworks, colorful and pretty and quick to fade, leaving smoke and a noxious scent in the air. But the breaking was not like this. Instead it made the whole world sharpen, come into stringent focus, so that every small detail shone like a beacon, every face or word or moment had a meaning. The veil of her misperception was ripped back from her eyes with a force that was painful, besieging her mind with a terrifying clarity that reason had always eluded.

She saw now—understood now—that he was the scattered shards of the bottles she threw against the floor, the shards of her soul, beautiful in the black-and-white flicker of lightening.

But they would not understand.

They would call him broken.

She could see now that there was nothing, no world, no stars, no life, no purpose, nothing other than this pale, wingless angel dying in the rain.

But they would not understand.

They would call him broken.

They would not understand that she hurt when he hurt, that when they tore his skin with smiles and knives it was her blood that spilt forth from his wounds. They would not trust the bond between a wingless angel and a living ghost, breathing beneath a canopy of branches, in a meadow, in the rain. They would not let her risk it, risk anything.

They would not understand.

They would call him broken.

They would take him away from her and lock him up in stiff suits that smothered blue bruises, her bruises, his bruises, too. They would make him fade, so that she would fade also, and so would her purpose. They would not trust this. They would not find beauty beneath a tree showered in a glimmer of gray raindrops, in a ragged boy who lay unconscious before a mother with dead eyes. They would turn angels into ghosts.

They would not understand.

They would call him broken.

They would be blinded by veils of misperception.

They would call him broken.

They would be afraid.

But she would not let them brand this boy—_her_ boy—as broken anymore, or give them the chance to sever the golden-black threads that bound them together. No. She was not going to let their poison of fear taint the beauty of this truth, this clarity, and lock it in stiff suits. Take it away from her. She was going to preserve this. She was going to make it better. All better. They would never touch him or call him broken ever again. Not after this. This was going to last forever.

_'A palace on a mountain, love, with white silk and red wine. I can see you on that mountain, smiling with a glass full of rosy liquid, a glass made out of starlight. You're offering it to me, on this mountain, in a palace, dressed in white silk. This is new heaven, our heaven, where you have wings, great ones, white ones, ones with lovely silver feathers…'_

_Why was this so hard? _

The rain would wash her sins away.

She raised the blade, which glittered pretty silver, as his wings would when he unfurled them for the first time. A guardian angel. Her guardian angel.

_Why was this so hard? _

Her hand wavered, but only for a moment. Auburn hair hung like streams of blood before pale eyes. Her face was hard and fragile. Hesitation was over. She drove the blade downward.

_Why was this so hard?_

Everything stopped.

_Why was this so hard?_

Murder.

**Author's Note: **Yeah—er—so this was definitely the most warped chapter. I purposely didn't mention names to make the overall description vague and eerie. Don't know if I got the effect or not—but I'm still pleased with it.

Of course, Luke obviously doesn't die because…well…he's in the series…but you have to wait until the next chapter to see how he gets out of this. As always, all reviews welcomed!


	5. Memory

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Rick Riordan does.

**Author's Note:** I want to give a special thanks to **pinktart**—my only viewer of chapter four, kind enough to be reviewing since the first chapter!

Oh, it has also been brought to my attention that a description in chapter two alluded to something it's not supposed to allude to—so I'll be taking it down and revising it. Thanks to **Phyco girl** for pointing it out!

Chapter Five

Memory

_He looks down from far away. _

_Like a faded painting, he sees the washed-out grays and dulling browns, the glimmering pinpricks of tiny raindrops as they fall over the scene in a tilted, silver veil. There is a woman he knows—or used to know—bending over something in the rain, lost amidst the splayed-out branches of a dying willow and the swaying stalks of tall, brittle vegetation. _

_He remembers her, but she seems different somehow, familiar yet estranged from the laughing woman who sipped red wine from sparkling crystal glasses. _

_He cannot hear her from where he resides in the clouds, but he imagines her voice as it used to be, low and mystical, like the deep, quieting ring of a bell. Memories linger over that voice, beautiful, echoing; a sound that melts into the image of long white fingers dancing across smooth ivory keys. A flick of auburn hair. A smile. Soft eyes. _

_These are easy things to remember. _

_But there are some things that even paradise cannot make vanish, and those are the thoughts that settle over him in black clouds. He thinks of a time when the woman is not laughing, not smiling, not singing—but gazing desperately at him with eyes that are like shattered glass; pale, glittering, broken._

_Memory is a ghost, haunting him. He looks back and sees the young woman throw something plain and gold at his feet; sees his own fingers pick it up; sees his own eyes see the little round circlet in his palm. _

"_What is this?"_

_Oppression. _

"_Will you leave me?"_

_Secrets. _

"_Never."_

_Now he casts his gaze down from far away and takes in another scene that will become a memory, a phantom; a dream that is hard to remember. He watches as the woman he knows—or used to know—becomes frantic in the storm, fumbling with her words as she whispers to something at her knees. _

_Whispers to a shadow…something he won't see in the rain. _

_Beneath a dying willow. _

_He won't see it. _

"_Will you leave me?"_

"_Never."_

_Lies. _

_She raises something that cuts clear and ugly through the portrait—something sharp and sinning, and in the flash of lightening he cannot pretend to overlook what he knows is there. _

_A child._

_He resurfaces from a palace on a mountain. _

_Older than the setting sun, younger than the rising dawn. _

_He lives forever. _

_The boy is only fourteen._

Perhaps he could have been a better father.

Perhaps if Hermes had not waited until the very moment when the Fates' withered fingers had pulled taut the string of his existence—waited until gnarled hands had hefted the curved, gleaming blades that sheared life in two—the boy would _not_ be lying in a puddle of his own diluted blood, beneath a tree, in the rain.

Perhaps he could have done something.

But—ah!—would it have been cliché to say that this _was_ fate, the precious timing of his arrival preordained to fit these morbid circumstances?

And then there were other meddlesome factors that kept his guilt at bay: the trying hours of his delivery service, now opened on even the latest nights, the constant flitting of messages between very temperamental and often moody gods, erupting at the words he conveyed from brother to sister, husband to wife, with cordial crispness; the mere truth that young heroes usually struggled and were required to lift themselves up alone, without the guidance or coddling of a divine parent.

Then again, he had given a bit of luck to one of the Stoll brothers the other day, but that was only because the boy was attempting to nick a particularly nice trinket, and that fat man at the counter had been so irksome. Really, he congratulated the boy on his progress; it had been quite a successful raid.

But this one…this one was so—

Yes, perhaps he could have been a better father.

Hermes frowned at the thought, descending swiftly and silently, lost in the Mist that shrouded human eye from the world that lay around them. It wasn't that he begrudged a child who had in many ways proven himself both remarkable and steadfast in the face of hardship; the boy had already exhibited the brave and honorable traits of strength, loyalty and perseverance.

It was only that his situation was so very…_so very…_

Hermes could not ignore the shameful truth that he had neglected this son, no matter how many clever retorts rose to challenge of expelling the hidden depths of his guilt. He had made a decision—a conscious choice—to turn a blind eye toward a child who shared the brightness of his eyes, the deftness of his foot, but not the spirits of his laugh or humor of his smile. There was something unnerving in his little pale face, so thin it was painful; something lost and broken in the way he moved about his life like a phantom, haunting rather than living. He seemed desperate, unwanted, laboring beneath the pressure of some heavy burden that grew only more daunting with each passing day, minute, second.

Hermes found himself waiting for the collapse.

Not that he wanted it to come, but he felt its presence lurking, creeping, slowly riddling cracks into a soul that was already fractured. He watched the boy falter, give in, fall beneath the hand of a man without morals, cry at the knees of a woman who should not have had children, because she had forgotten how to love.

Not that these things disturbed Hermes. As an omnipotent, omniscient, forever-existing god, he felt no twinge of fear or even slight discomfort at scenes so twisted; a ravaged mother who cut her hands over the kitchen sink, a little boy who played with broken bottle parts, a stepfather who smiled cruelly before his hand swung and collided with a child's face—these were not at all pleasant things, but they were unable to shake the unshakeable interior of a god.

They were merely the unpleasant circumstances of an unlucky child.

And gods did not like to deal with unpleasant circumstances.

Furrows creased a smooth, ageless brow. That was the reason. _Really. _

Plus, gods were often very busy. Had he mentioned that?

Hermes pursed his lips as his sandaled feet touched the mossy floor of the meadow, grimacing at the feel of coarse, tangled weeds, inwardly grimacing at the prospect of this visit.

Years were short to him, flashing by in blurred, frenzied streaks, as quick and fleeting as lightening, but he knew the human eye was not as immune to time. To Andromeda years were likely eternities, stretching before her in long, dark tunnels, inching by slowly as they snatched bits of a decaying life along with it.

He wondered what it was like to live a limited existence. It sounded very drear indeed, though perhaps there was a spark of adventure to having a deadline. He would never know.

In any case, his absence must have been quite lengthy to Andromeda, and he was certain she would not be altogether pleased at his sudden arrival—(he complimented himself on such an excellent euphemism)—especially to interrupt what she considered a critical moment of her motherhood.

The thought made Hermes's grimace deepened. She _had_ been reasonably upset upon his departure, but he never expected her mind to sink past boundaries so low that cold-blooded murder was rationalized as the loving option.

He quickened his pace slightly, gauging his time, aware that he could appear in a shower of sparks but knowing that a flashy entrance would only startle and further damage the situation. He would jog—the way he had when he first met her, fair and lovely, on that boardwalk by the edge of town, overlooking the bay. Remembrance would soothe her, familiarity carrying a sense of calmness with it.

Of course, the boardwalk was also the place where he told her—

If years were mere seconds, than minutes were nonexistent to a god: his feet slowed as he neared a pale, redheaded woman driving a knife down to a prone, apparently sleeping child in the dirt.

Young teenager, really. The boy looked about fourteen.

There was an odd, fleeting burst of light, and the blade jerked out of the woman's hand, spiraling then landing with a soft _plop _in a grassy patch of land a few feet away. The woman gasped, her pale eyes following the motion before traveling to the ashen face of the boy who lay unconscious at her feet.

She swept soaking blonde bangs off his forehead, murmuring frantically, incomprehensibly.

"Good evening, Andromeda," Hermes spoke, and the woman looked up at him.

He was not entirely sure what he expected to happen. Perhaps tears, as was so common among women, or an acrimonious armada of words spewed from the lips of an embittered soul, intent on harm.

Perhaps she would simply pass out. That was also very common among women.

But Andromeda did none of these things. Her pallid eyes were like ghosts as they scanned his face, glazed, haunting, her breath coming in slow, ragged pants that clouded the air like mist. She did not move to brush away the strands of red hair that hung in her eyes. Instead, her whole body stilled; her face hardened as if she was solidifying into some sort of charming, demented glass statue.

Her lips broke abruptly, quiet words pouring from them.

"No…" she whispered lightly. "A dream…a dream…a nightmare…"

Hermes did not understand the meaning behind those words, though perhaps if gods were capable of being shaken, he would have been unsettled by them. He moved to take her hand, suddenly struck by sweet memories, but she recoiled as if he were a python, scrambling to her feet and screaming in a voice that was not her own.

"NO, NO, A NIGHTMARE—" She fell to soft murmurings. "_…just a dream…a dream…so pretty…" _

The sight affected Hermes in ways gods were not supposed to be affected. This woman—wasting in her tattered nightgown, shrieking in strained voices, stumbling around the body of her unconscious son—was someone he had once admired, sought out, even held a bit of sentiment to.

_Memories. _Maybe it was more than a bit of sentiment.

But gods did not feel pain, grief, or sadness.

Never guilt.

Andromeda was running from him now, toward the fallen knife, but the moment her fingers grazed its handle the blade melted away, along with the rainwater, dripping into slow silver-gray droplets of water that splattered against the soil.

Something in the destruction of her weapon made her crumple. She went down in a wave of dark skirts; hair pouring like wine over her eyes, thin white hands clamped over a gaunt, though somehow beautiful face. She rocked on her knees, bent so low to the ground that she barely looked human any longer, just some sort of strange, lovely, emaciated creature drowning in the rain.

She whipped her face to him, suddenly, and opened her mouth as if to scream—but the sound died in her throat, faded, and left her staring blankly.

_Is this what you want?_

Hermes shook his head, seeing the words in her eyes, hearing them in his ears, but unable to comprehend what she was truly saying.

_Is this what you want? _

He walked over smoothly to her bowed figure, placing a calm hand on a shoulder that stiffened beneath his touch. For a crushing moment, he thought she was going to bat him away, but she remained motionless, gazing intently past him to the billowing black clouds banked on the dreary horizon.

He lowered his lips to her ear. "Andromeda, what are you doing?"

Her body felt so cold beneath his fingers. He wondered if this was what it felt like—death—just a chill coldness that crept in as life, golden elixir, seeped out.

_Is this what you want?_

Her lips were dark and oddly full, like plums. They smiled.

"…you…you…ruin this…"

"Ruin what, dearest?" Hermes queried. "Murder? An attempt to destroy the life of a child who has yet to live? Oh, no, dearest! Saved! I have just saved you. You and the boy both."

Ashen eyes traveled across the sky, counted the raindrops, then focused vaguely on his face. Her hands twitched convulsively, as if trying to break free from the dreamlike state that possessed her; a flicker of true, solid emotion flashing on features that were indistinct, almost unreal.

"Save…save?" The eyes widened. "Save? _SAVE?"_

In a roaring, ugly, vibrant crash, all reality seemed to return to Andromeda, burning in her face with an expression as potent as fire, reeling her from his grasp, throwing her toward the child sprawled beneath the willow.

"You—you haven't saved—_you!" _She screeched the word almost incoherently, the emphasis behind it heavy and full of deep resentment. "You—you—_you promised! _You promised me! 'Will you leave me?' 'Will you leave me?' 'Never!' 'Never!' You promised, liar, you promised, you said—you—you—you—_you…"_

They were rough, throaty, harsh words that scraped against her throat, contorting a voice that had once lilted through song into a strangled cry.

But the last exclamation was different—it rolled off her tongue, the tone changed, softening, until it was breathy and swallowed in a broken desperation that could have been unnerving, if gods were capable of being unnerved; an odd mixture of sweetness and bitterness.

Hermes had expected—and been almost relieved—by the sudden gust of anger that had awoken Andromeda from her drowsy insanity, but this new note in her voice worried him, even if it brought echoes of her former character to mind. She seemed to be falling back into the disturbed nostalgia of memory—the cold, icy gray folds of a never-ending longing—that had wrapped about her brain when he first departed for Olympus.

Hermes tried to call back the dregs of her sanity. "Andromeda, I know about—I mean, the promise, I remember it. But you were so very young back then, so frightened and innocent, and I just couldn't tell you the truth.

But now that you know, now that you're wiser…how could I have possibly stayed? A promise is only words, dearest. If it were possible, that would be one thing, but how could I? Andromeda, seek _reason."_

His plea dwindled in the moist, rainy air, covered by an impending silence that cursed his words to nothingness.

There was something very frightening about the woman who stood there, dressed in her torn black nightgown, which slid off her bony right shoulder; something frightening about the unkempt auburn tresses that fell in jagged, uneven lengths about a face that was pretty but wasted; something frightening about her lips, her hands—her eyes…

Those eyes—there was something about them—those eyes—so similar to ghosts, so pale, so vacant, so familiar, screaming for a remembered past—_those eyes—_

He could not make out their color in the rain.

Not that he, a god, felt the slightest unease in this situation. Gods could be angered, but never disconcerted.

But she kept on staring at him with those odd eyes of no color, leaning down gently to the boy who resided in the dirt.

Her expression never wavered—it was not serene, but it was not chaotic either; just a very thin mask of fragileness that would wither away with the next breath of wind, like a veil drifting from the face of a porcelain doll. She ran her fingers along the child's bruised jaw, as if contemplating it, almost admiring it.

"He throws himself away," she stated quietly.

"If you keep him out here much longer, he will become ill," Hermes retorted in a reasonable tone.

"He is always ill," She placed a wet, cold hand over his heart. "Right here. He's always ill, right here. And—" The fingers swept to his brow. "Right here, too. He's always ill right here. But I won't bring him to the doctor. They'll make him sick, you know, sicker. I like him this way. This is how I want it."

Hermes frowned at the comment. "No you don't. That's our child."

The words struck Andromeda, cracking the fragileness that masked her face. Her eyes became writhing, bitter phantoms, raging in her sockets, rather than the fading, sadly wallowing ones of a few moments ago.

"He is _not _your child," she hissed through clenched teeth. "He is _my _child, _my _angel, _my_ guardian. He is _not_ yours, not _ours—_only_ mine. Mine _alone."

The locked, hidden seeds of a neglectful father's guilt came unfettered. Hermes found it difficult to look at the boy.

"I could not stay for you, dearest. How could I stay for him?"

"But I was right! I was right! I told you it would be a boy—I told you when…but I was right, see? Look! Look at him! Isn't it lovely? He—He's dying—isn't it…I told you it was a boy!"

Hermes forced a smile. His eyes still refused to see the child.

"Yes, you did tell me it would be a boy."

There was a long, painful silence amid the rustling of rain-spattered leaves. Then—

"You are very selfish."

Hermes gaze snapped almost viciously from the gnarled tree-branches it had wandered to uncomfortably, returning to the woman who sat, quite calmly now, brushing bits of loose leaf the boy's sandy blonde hair.

But though her movements were gentle, her voice had sounded cold, bitter, when she made the announcement—sharp with a venom that was supposed to cut like a knife, piercing through the flesh, poisoning the soul.

Any sane woman would have held her tongue in the presence of an awe-inspiring god, but this one made her statement openly, bluntly, her concentration focused entirely on grooming her son's filthy mane of blonde hair.

Her face looked shadowed.

"I was…this was supposed to be…" She bent low over the child, lost in some deep connection that Hermes could never feel because he had never been a part of. "I was going to preserve him so no one would ever—no one would ever touch him, and in heaven…he'd have wings. Pretty, pretty silver wings. But you keep them."

She glanced up at him with hard eyes. "You're very selfish, keeping wings from him. All for yourself, on your clean white shoes. Keep the wings from him! You must find it fun to watch him fall."

Her eyes kept watching him. _Is this what you want?_

Hermes felt his throat tightened, a faint beat of anger pulsating in his chest. What was this woman talking about? Her words were the ravings of a madwoman, shrill and nonsensical, though a thread of dark truth was woven through each message like a trickle of told secrets. Winding, cryptic riddles.

Or was she literally referring to his enchanted footwear?

_Wings…..._

And what had those words meant—"_you must find it fun to watch him fall?"_

The faint anger condensed and hardened in his chest. Did she truly think he wanted this—any of this—the overall disagreeableness of having a child who suffered beneath the weight of a mother's insanity and a stepfather's cruelty? That Olympus was merely a ring of finely-garbed deities, gazing downward, peering comfortably through golden binoculars at the boy who staggered and crumpled beneath a burden so heavy?

_Keeping wings from him…..._

_An angel?_

No. That wasn't it. That wasn't the reason for his neglect. It was only—

Gods did not like to deal with unpleasant circumstances.

"I will forgive your rudeness, Andromeda," he replied stiffly. "Only because I understand that you are not in your right mind. Otherwise, I would not have found you attempting to murder _our_ child. But you are speaking in riddles that have no answers. The boy will live. I will make sure of it. He wants to live. Deep inside, I know you want him to live too."

"Live?" Andromeda breathed the word in like a memory, a lullaby. "'I want to live.' A—a palace on a mountain, white silk, and red wine, and if we live enough—"

A gasp tore from her trembling lips, her gaze jerking from the handsome, though pallid-looking child at her knees to the similarly handsome young man who stood before her. Her chest rose and fell in rapid succession, a clawed hand clutching at a tight fistful of her dress's dull fabric.

Her eyes were dancing with a memory Hermes did not know.

"Elf-eyes," she whispered. "I hate him for many reasons, but mostly…._elf-eyes." _

She picked herself up in an abrupt, hurried rise, her grungy skirts swaying about her ankles in such a sad display of dirt and frayed cloth that she truly appeared lost, pathetic. She stumbled, abandoning the boy, and reached out for him with long, slender fingertips stained in the scarlet shadow of her blood.

Hermes sidestepped out of her grasp, deniably frantic, but the woman had become alive with some sort of odd passion, and caught him, her touch grazing the corner of his eye.

Her skin felt cool, like ice.

"Elf-eyes," Andromeda repeated, her own eyes wet with something that was not rain-water. "He stole something from you…do you want it back?" He closed his eyes and she ran her fingers over them. "Is what why you keep wings from him? Because he stole something…do you want it back?"

Hermes's eyes opened, and if there was ever a moment when a god could reach his lowest, when even his most powerful feeling of blessed divinity seeped from him in a dimming white light, leaving him shadowed and humbled and mortal, perhaps now was that moment.

Andromeda was close, too close, with her fingertips hovering just over his face. He could see the thickness of her lashes, the richness of her short auburn tresses, the beauty that still glimmered in her gaunt, ravaged face. She made him think of memories. Over her shoulder, he was aware of the boy that lay ignorant of his presence, equally pale but infused with a vigorous, fighting spirit, sharing his father's keen eyes—

_Stealing his father's eyes—_

Hermes began to step away, but Andromeda let out a cry, snatching for his wrist, her upturned face full of that all-too-familiar desperation.

"Wait—" she called softly in his ear. "Wait—please—be…mine…I—I'm yours, I'm yours, be—mine…"

He pulled away from her. "Andromeda, it _cannot _be."

Her gaze went wild, her chest heaved, her eyes riveting to the boy beneath bloody bangs of red hair. Her irises were colorless circlets set in a mist of white.

"You left because of _him," _she spat scornfully. "You left because of that—that—that person, that boy, that…that…my…baby…"

She threw a glare of mixed emotions at the child, then returned it to Hermes, breathing like she had just run many miles from a murderer.

"What's it like up there?" she murmured. "Is it beautiful? Do you wear white silk? Drink red wine? I told him you might come for us. 'Wouldn't that be lovely?' I said. 'Wouldn't it be lovely?' Now I know you'll never come. This is—a nightmare. Reality. The same thing, either way. Still, I want to know what it's like to sit up there, and watch him unwind. What's it like, knowing you can do everything, and sitting up there, watching him unwind, unravel, like a doll made out of yarn?"

Silence. Now it was Andromeda who stepped back, Hermes who advanced.

"Dearest, this is not what I wanted—"

"No," A hand crept up to a thread of pearls strung about her neck. "No, take this back."

The moment seemed suspended in the air, the delicate wire snapping, the clasp breaking, the priceless pearls falling in a slow, shimmering shower of jewels that touched soundlessly, surreally, to the dirt.

_Pearls….._

_She looked so beautiful that night, garbed in a graceful attire of white lace, her thick red tresses twined about her skull in a bun so elaborate it probably cost all her savings to have it done. _

_But it was a special night. _

_Her face was a fresh, innocent blossom—a white rose—like a flower whose beauty unfurled before him in a display of radiant, shining petals. She turned to him with an unbridled joy in her light, dancing eyes. No phantoms, no ghosts. Just dancing lights of all colors. _

_"A gift…for me?"_

_She laughed. _

_He smiled. _

_The velvet box was pulled back slowly on its hinges, revealing a set of the most perfect, most glorious pearls ever to be seen, dazzling with a soft pink sheen, each jewel like an individual star plucked from a galaxy where light was the faintest shade of fuchsia._

_He clasped in around her neck. _

_"I'll wear it forever." _

_Forever….._

_Forever….._

_…pearls…_

Hermes watched as the little spheres tumbled, glimmering like minute stars of faint fuchsia, fluttering down noiselessly through the foggy gray air of a rain-misted dusk.

He was not unnerved. He was not hurt.

He was a god.

Perhaps if Andromeda had been a different woman, or if Hermes were another god, she would have been struck down by some forceful ray of divine power; punished for the brashness of her actions and insolence of her words, consumed in a light capable of gnawing her bones to their very marrows; trapped eternally in the darkest, most nightmarish corner of the Field of Punishment.

But Andromeda was _not_ a different woman, and Hermes _not_ another god. He simply leveled his cool, elfish eyes to meet her dead colorless ones, and spoke six short words.

"Goodbye, Andromeda. The boy will live."

For a moment, it looked as though the redhead might speak, but in a flash Hermes was gone, leaving only a golden silhouette of his figure as memory, quickly fading away to the quiet pitter-patter of the slowing raindrops.

Perhaps Hermes could have been a better father.

But from that moment on, he decided never to intervene directly in his son's life.

**Author's Note: **Yeah, this chapter was from a weird point of you. I wanted to make sure that Hermes stayed at fault—after all, this story is sympathetic to_Luke—_but I wanted to keep him in character. Don't worry, Luke is actually conscious in the next chapter, and in the one after that, I actually get to introduce Thalia and Annabeth! squeals with excitement _Please—please—please _read and review! I really appreciate it. Thanks!


	6. Suicide

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Rick Riordan does.

**A/N:** Hey! Okay, so I edited this REALLY late at night, meaning that chances are I'll read it over tomorrow, be horrified, and take it down for corrections. lol. But my excitement made me reckless…so I put it up now. Just thought you should know I might end up making changes to it.

Oh, thank you everyone for such lovely reviews! Really, there what keeps me going; comments and constructive criticism are always welcomed.

Chapter six

Suicide

_Falling from grace._

_Dragging the child back into a high, withered old house, her bare feet cut against the sharpness of the brambles. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Setting him down in a room full of scattered bottles, watching him breathe in the stale air; the slow, labored wheezing of a sick child. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Standing before a mirror that hangs like a silver shadow on the wall, and reaching out a sole finger to the image of a woman who cannot be defined. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Looking at a gaunt face that haunts the darkness, dark lips, pale eyes, hair that falls like frayed ribbons to her chin. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Remembering a little girl with a halo of auburn hair, left alone with her nanny while her parents danced and played in far away places. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Recalling how daddy loved little white cards and crinkled green paper and loud boisterous laughter. Recalling men in nice suits who liked to play games and count up glittering gold chips. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Tumbling into memories of when daddy lost everything. No more little white cards, no more loud boisterous laughter. No more crinkled green paper to throw in piles at games. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Meeting the face of a masquerade man, vile, cruel, and handsome, promising with words he never will keep. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Listening to the prods of an indebted father; marrying a masquerade man for some green slips of paper. _

_Falling from grace._

_Wedding dresses are a tumble of snowy-white ivory, pallid blue pearls, and ribbons of wet, wet crimson. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Realizing lies, breaking smooth promises. A masquerade man has no slips of green paper to offer. Murderer. Gambler. Crime-lord. Husband. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Having a family abandon her, heads held high; condescending, arrogant, spiteful. She is mired in conspiracy, sees murder, knows theft. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Remembering how she wore pretty dresses, sang pretty songs, and danced pretty dances with a man who lied about his name. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Seeing the man leave her, hearing gossipers talk, and almost killing a boy in a sharp field of bramble. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Touching the reflection of a woman whose face haunts the darkness; garbed in tatters that swallow up any light that lingers about a mortal goddess. There is no beauty in the face of a statue. _

_Falling from grace. _

_There is no love for a woman who breaks pearls. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Tiring of the fall. _

_Falling from grace. _

_Now she hits the rock bottom._

Luke should not have gone to school that day.

It was the only thing he could think of as he eased into the stiff, wooden chair before the principle's desk, his anger shooting like spits of flame throughout a body that was bruised and tired.

Alright, so he had punched out a teacher. But Mr. Nigels _deserved _it.

He had spent most of yesterday unconscious in the rain, leaking from wounds while a willow stretched its slender arms over him, providing a very cheap form of shelter.

He had awoken hours later, somehow inside, shivering in his damp clothing and trekking a hand through limp straggles of blonde hair. His breath came out in wispy trails, and when he edged over on his side, a screaming pain flared up his right ankle. Thinking back on it, he could still recall the image of the brutal red slash, grinning crookedly just above his foot, ugly against pale skin.

But perhaps more curious than anything else was his mother, for when Luke had finally pulled his stiff body into a rise, he had found her lying in shambles besides him, her breath shaking through clattering teeth, her body shuddering so forcefully that he could feel the tremors through the floorboards.

He waited until the pain in his ankle receded, then worked slowly to shift her into the short, flat mattress pushed in the corner of a cramped room. Her unbearable thinness made it easy, but Luke still found it difficult to move limbs that prickled at the slightest motion he made, heavier than lead as he dragged his feet around broken shards of glass.

When she finally rested on the mattress, he drew a coarse, woolen blanket over her frame—one of the oldest relics in the house—and hoped that Lucas would come home late tonight, so that an inkling of strength could return to her deprived muscle, perhaps even a tinge of color to her empty cheeks.

He was surprised to discover that the sun had only just lifted its heavy gold body over the horizon, and had headed to the bathroom to clean himself up; pretending foolishly that if he covered up the injuries in a clever enough guise, no one would guess that his life at home comprised of balled fists and glinting switchblades.

It had been an exceedingly long, tedious school-day, filled with the disappointed sighs and pointed glares and clicking tongues of teachers who would not accept "I have dyslexia" as a reasonable explanation for undone homework. Luke had treaded through the slow hours with the sole relief that tomorrow he would not be attending classes, despite the fact that it was Monday, and he had a frighteningly long expanse of school yawning ahead of him.

No; tomorrow he was simply cutting. It was a much-needed respite after locking himself in a prison of red ink and uncomfortable desks for hours, especially with his mother curled up on a threadbare mattress at home, quite vulnerable and pitifully weak.

The bell had just rung, a loud, screeching sound in the still air, and Luke had leaped gratefully from his seat. He was almost proud of himself for enduring a whole class of biology without attracting the unwanted attention of Mr. Nigels, a foppish, oddly old-looking man of about forty, always sneering behind his spectacles, his mouth a jagged leer in a sea of wiry beard.

Luke had just swung his bag over his shoulder when the voice sounded.

"Mr. Volpas, a word, please."

Luke choked back a grunt, ducking his head low as he turned back in the direction of the upright, bearded man. Volpas was truly the surname of his mother's maniacal husband, not him, but no matter how hard he attempted to pry Andromeda's surname from her, she had resolutely refused to give it.

"You have no name," she murmured once, fixing him with an eye glazed with pain and alcohol. "Just…just a mask you wear outside. No name, first or last. "

Be that as it may, the thought of sharing a surname with the bloodlusting manic christened "stepfather" still made Luke's insides coil; it took all his strength to arrange his face into something seemingly composed and respond.

"Yeah, Mr. Nigels?"

"_Yes, _Volpas," Nigels corrected snappishly. "Not 'yeah.' That is such a crude rendition of the word."

Luke ran a hand through his tousled hair, tugging on the loose strands that hung limp at the nape of his neck. Mr. Nigels detested his unruly blonde tresses; precisely the reason Luke rumpled them so often in class.

He looked the man directly in the eye, suppressing a sigh.

"_Yes_, Mr. Nigels?" A note of sarcasm crept into his voice.

The man's eyes glinted coolly beneath thick lens.

"I am tired of your slacking," he explained evenly. "This hardly counts as work."

Mr. Nigels spoke in a smooth, oiled voice, stretching the syllables of each word slowly and steadily, as though fearing Luke might not understand him. Luke merely cocked his eyebrows in a sign of feigned interest, nodding slightly. It was a tacit test of wills between the two: who was more capable of conveying their utter dislike for the other through silent, subtle means.

But now Mr. Nigels was pushing a rather crumpled, two-page report across his desk to Luke, who stared down at it with fully authentic shocked eyes.

"Mr. Nigels, I—I don't understand—"

"Do you have a computer, Mr. Volpas?" the man sniped curtly. "I will not tolerate handwritten reports when I know there are neater ways. Not to mention that many of the medical terms are misspelled."

Luke forced down the anger flooding up his throat. They had been through this before. Mr. Nigels seemed to find a deep salvation in bringing to light every fault Luke possessed due to his dyslexia—the fact that he read at a halting, staggering pace, that the easiest of words swum off the pages and blurred into alien texts, that he sometimes struggled through a five-lined paragraph, even at his embarrassingly mature age of fourteen.

Once in class he had called on Luke, and amid the snickers of cruelly amused peers, required him to stumble through a list of the most complex, difficult biological terms in the entire book.

It had been slow torture: the words skittered almost frantically about the corners of the pages, like ants crawling around in hurried circles, and the jerk behind him had been shaking with such profound fits of silent laughter that he could almost feel the guy's body trembling. The girl next to him had turned her head away; her copper ponytail swishing in a flash, but Luke had caught how tightly she pressed her lips together, in a quivering line that smothered the desire to laugh at a scene so sadly pathetic.

When the flimsy threads of his confidence—already strained by the terrible words Lucas whispered into his ears at night—had finally snapped completely, Luke simply shut the book and gazed at his teacher with the coldest, blankest look he could muster.

But no eyes of daggers, however honed, could waver the conviction of the man who stood before him: Mr. Nigels merely returned the glare with a skeptic, almost expectant gleam in his eye, whiskered lips playing with a flicker of a satisfied smirk. Despite the heavy glasses he shoved up the bridge of her nose, his vision must have been too hampered to notice the student in front of him, performing a soundless imitation of Luke gaping wordlessly at the pages.

He simply waved a dismissive hand and drawled something about working harder.

Well, Luke _had_ been working harder—in order to avoid the pain of a humiliation as thick and scarring as that again. He had spent a near full week laboring over the paper Mr. Nigels now pushed across the desk with a deprecating sneer, often blinking gritty eyes and scrawling down words at the latest of hours, after Lucas had thrown him around enough to make his skull rattle and his mother had passed out at least twice.

It was one of the rare papers he had actually bothered to do.

"Mr. Nigels, you know I have dyslexia, so even when I look at the textbook, it's still hard to see the words clearly! And no, my house doesn't have a computer—"

"You could have used the library."

"I can't afford to go to the library," Luke retorted immediately, albeit sheepishly. "My mom's really—uh—sick, and I need to look after her—"

"Yes," Mr. Nigels muttered, a scoff lurking in the smooth, velvet tones of his voice. "I imagine she is."

The raging tide of his anger was suddenly reeled short, withdrawing with a jolt so forceful that his whole body felt stunned with it, ringing faintly, something bitter and frozen stilling the rush of blood in his veins and halting the harsh contractions of his heart.

_What had that man just said?_

"Sir, I don't understand you."

The voice was deadpan.

"I only mean to say," Mr. Nigels smiled unpleasantly. "That your mother is not an entirely…respectable woman, and her conduct is quite capable of causing illness."  
"Her conduct?" Luke echoed.

He felt something teetering on the edge of his numbness; a huge, hulking shadow that prowled along the rim of his temper, prepared to pounce down upon his soul and tear it to pieces with the strength of its anger, its ravenous fury.

It was a shadow fed by the rage of tried loyalty.

"Yes, her conduct. High alcohol consumption…_you, _even. I don't mean to be presumptuous, but it is quite obvious that…ah, well, it is quite obvious that the man your mother is living with is not your father."

The shadow, lumbering on the perimeter of his restraints, snarled in a vicious, livid voice, shredding through his numbness with a single swipe of an intangible, acid claw.

_"Don't ever speak that way about my mother, you—"_

Mr. Nigels's eyes widened behind the thick panes of his glasses. He was startled by the rapid change in the conversation's tone, affronted by the rough edge of loath that raked so powerfully against the boy's throat, throwing words like daggers at his lowered defenses.

"I will speak any way I wish to about your mother, Volpas!" he snapped irately. "Do you even know who your father is? Most likely not; in fact, I doubt even your _mother_ knows who the man is, what with how she occupies her free time—"

And that was all it took for Luke's fist to collide with the wizened, bumpy jaw of a teacher.

It was an action of pure emotion, spurred by the roar of the shadow in his chest, slashing his restraints to tatters; the sight of his mother in his eyes, pale and shaking as she moaned beneath a coarse quilt; the sound of her sobbing in his ears, like the low, fading song of something beautiful being slain.

He did not recognize Mr. Nigels as he drew back his fist and rammed into his jowl; he did not see the classroom blur to a dim smudge of black chalkboards and brown desks, or notice the shrills of the bystanders as they neared the door, horrified, excited, disbelieving, enthralled.

The man before him had become the faceless opposition that had reared before Luke since the earliest days of his childhood, a great wall he knew he must topple before it toppled him: he was the huddles of people who glanced at his mother with such curious, disapproving eyes, tight in their private niches, frightened but so fascinated, branding the woman with scarlet-red scandal. He was the tall glass bottles that were emptied every night, broken against the dirty floor; the same shards Luke used to cut his hands against as a child, too young to understand that such pretty, glittering chips were dangerous. He was the shadows that used to lurk in the corners of his bedroom, flit between the folds of his sheets, leak through dark windowpanes when he was awoken by a nightmare; he was the soft, hissing voices that whispered from under Luke's mattress, the high cackle of things that Lucas told him existed only to torment him.

He was the pain and the beating and the violence and the blood that soaked through Luke's life like a stream of sludge soiling the purity of a white veil.

He could hear them murmur, hear them talk in hushed voices—spin tangled conspiracies about a redheaded woman he loved more than life, that his whole purpose rested upon; a woman they burdened with the crimson mantle of the letter _A—_adultery—and jeered at while they hid their own scandals in pockets, tucked their own sins away with cobwebs in closets.

He would not let them talk about his mother.

But sitting in the principle's office, his chin in his palm, Luke doubted that Miss. Belhz would understand the gravity of the situation. Not that this bothered him. He had been kicked out of plenty of schools before; no guardian was going to harp on him about it. He just hoped that this meeting would not last long.

And that maybe he could get Mr. Nigels fired.

The door swung open and in strode a harried-looking woman, her smooth chestnut hair combed back in a bun, her eyes shrewd as they overlooked the rims of her half-moon spectacles. She walked in quick strides, settling herself down behind her desk in a brisk, businesslike manner.

"Luke," she spoke firmly. "You were in my office five times last week. I thought we were going to break the vicious cycle."

He frowned tiredly. "I don't want to be here either, Miss. Belhz."

The woman narrowed her sharp, piercing eyes.

"Then why do you insist on causing trouble?" Her voice remained steadily calm, though the solid, cold edge in it grew, along with the thickness of her anger. "Why do you insist on never doing your homework? Why do you insist on cutting class? _Why _do you insist on causing a commotion every day you come in—_if _you come in at all?"

"Ma'am," Luke answered hurriedly. "I didn't _try _to cause a commotion. Mr. Nigels just hates me! You should have heard what he said about my mother—"

Miss. Belhz sighed, steepling her fingers into small, stiff arcs; surveying Luke skeptically over the structure.

"Mr. Nigels has always been a good teacher, and you always an irresponsible student."

The surge of his anger doubled. "So you're just going _assume_ that I'm wrong!"

Miss. Belhz drew two fingers to her temple, loosing a long, pointed sigh through pinched nostrils.

"No, Luke, I'm not going to do that. But you must understand that the odds are against you."

"Then kick me out! It wouldn't be the first time!"

The woman made no response, simply settling herself further into a plush, high-backed chair, while he pressed his back against the wooden frame of his.

"What exactly did Mr. Nigels say?"

The words came echoing back to him, in a torrent of ugly, vividly pulsing disgust, and he almost couldn't think through the roar in his ears. He thought of his mother, pale, torn, and ravaged, looking up at Lucas with eyes that were too tired, too dead to cry. He thought of the lullabies she used to sing through the crack in his door, when the hour was late and the thickest of shadows fell over him like a mantle, all while her voice wove pretty tapestries—tapestries of a tall, lovely palace that shone in far away places; places that didn't really exist, but he could dream about.

He thought about how she sometimes smiled in her sleep, sometimes screamed, and woke calling for a man that would never come.

How could you judge a woman like that?

The impact left his speechless. He mouthed a bit, grappling for words that slipped through his fingers, floating in a haze over the face of a sad, broken woman.

Miss. Belhz lifted a penciled eyebrow.

"Have you come up with a proper story to entertain us yet?"

"No!" Luke started, jumping out of his brooding thoughts. "Ma'am…I'm not making this up. Mr. Nigels really _did_ insult my mother. He called her…he said…"

Once again, the words choked in his throat. He clenched the arms of his chair and looked the woman directly in the eye.

"He implied something very rude about my mother's character," he finally answered, in a stiff voice that hardly sounded like him; the tone washed over him like the words of a stranger.

Miss. Belhz lips seemed to stir momentarily, as if moving to a frown, but she quelled the motion and returned his straight gaze. He could tell she doubted him; the vagueness of his response, coupled with his soiled record from previous schools painted a rather unattractive image, but Luke felt no worry touch him. He was telling the truth, after all.

And even if he couldn't convince her…this wouldn't be the first time he was expelled.

Finally, the woman opened her mouth, snatching at the thin handle of her coffee cup.

"And if I were to question Mr. Nigels on this?"

"He would come up with some really lame lie," Luke retorted immediately, grinding his teeth at the furious image of Mr. Nigels, eyes aloft and innocent, twisting the truth around until he had some crooked tale of how he was merely encouraging Luke to work a _bit_ harder, and the boy had lunged at him with a pocketknife.

"Could you be more specific on what he said?" Miss. Belhz queried suddenly, bringing the cup of stone-cold coffee to her lips.

Luke froze on the question, the words ringing in his head. The content of Mr. Nigels' insult would most likely leave Miss. Belhz with raised eyebrows, and the origins of his father was _not_ something he wanted to discuss with the principle.

Though it _would _be nice to see Mr. Nigels sacked…

He settled somewhere in the middle: offering a reasonably hazy response, but clear enough to get the point across.

"He said...well," Luke mumbled, searching for words. "Stuff about my mom and dad. You know, how I don't know him. And how they weren't married."

He was banking on the fact that in a small Virginian town knotted with prominent cliques, everyone knew about his mother and her scandalous affair with some rich, unknown man who inexplicitly vanished after she became pregnant.

Luke's father. His fingers tightened at the thought, though whether out of anger or some other emotion, he couldn't tell.

His father had always been a blurred, unsolved mystery to him, a muddle of memories he didn't have—just the faint, hovering, indistinct shadow of a man whose presence haunted everything the boy said, felt, touched. Obscured in some forbidden shroud, everyone who threw a glance at Luke sought for something in his face, the answer to some secret riddle, the light of understanding in his strange, elfin features.

One look at his lank, pale form, and they knew who his father was, but he didn't.

Other people were satisfied with an unclear silhouette titled "father," but Luke often felt that there was a gaping hole where that knowledge should be, like a perfectly-fitted puzzle piece torn from its portrait, leaving the whole picture hollow and undone.

Leaving him undone.

Much of his childhood was spent tugging on the skirts of his mother, inquiring tentatively about the man, but the ghost of some hard, unwonted emotion always fell over his mother's face at the question, cloaking her expression in a mingle of bittersweet feeling.

She rambled about things that were pretty but obviously untrue: palaces that rose glimmering spires to the clouds, shoes enchanted with white-angel wings, clothes of fine-spun silk, bottles of rich crimson wine. Luke didn't think he would ever understand what she meant.

But sitting with his back pressed against the uncomfortable wooden beams of a chair, his ankle still throbbing from a red-caked gash, his mother huddled somewhere in their ramshackle home, sobbing for the man who abandoned her, he felt nothing but a deep-seeded resentment, a sour fury that boiled to his innermost core.

No matter how rich, mysterious, or similar in appearance, in the end his father was just like anyone else who had power—appearing in a façade of white-shining glory, weaving beautiful promises he would never keep, and manipulating others until the consequences were too trying, at which he would desert the situation.

Luke's fists clenched, this time in certain anger. His father was a jerk, and he would never be like him.

"Your father," Miss. Belhz replied softly, cutting straight through the gauze of his reverie. There was an odd look in her eye. "Mr. Nigels said something about…your mother's conduct…and your father…?"

"Yeah," Luke muttered, and he felt his gut twist uncomfortably at her stare. This was even worse than he thought. "So, do you believe me?"

Miss. Belhz pursed her white lips, looking at him levelly and calmly.

"Luke," she said, bypassing his question completely. "How are things? At home, I mean. Is everything alright? Because if there's a problem, I'm here to—"

Luke knew how he should have answered: a breezy smile and an offhand comment about how wonderful things were, but instead his heart jumped two beats and lodged in his throat. He was suddenly staring at the woman through a fog, unable to see her face properly.

The words flew from his lips before he could stop them.

"I don't see how my life at home relates our conversation, Ma'am. It's not important at all."

A foolish response, but it rushed from him in a rapid stream, leaving Luke painfully aware of the bruises knotted just below his shirt, the gash oozing just beneath his bandages, the broken bottles heaped in glittering piles just a few blocks away in his house. He thought of those days when he found his mother hanging over the sink, slicing her palms with a kitchen knife, or those late nights when Lucas clamped his cold fingers around his neck, whispering of dark intentions that foretold violence.

"There's no reason to get defensive," Miss. Belhz answered, further engaged by his tone. "I just want to help, if you'll let me. Tell me what's wrong."

_"Nothing's _wrong!" Luke shouted, leaping to his feet. "Why do people like you always have to assume something's wrong? Because my dad left my mom? Because I don't know who he is? Well, we're fine; _I'm_ fine. So…just leave us alone. I've got everything under control."

Normally, a tone so sharp would have offended the principle, but now she merely gazed at Luke with a sad, patient look in her eyes. It was like she was something infinitely wiser, infinitely more knowing, and he was simply a lower life-form wriggling beneath the bait she dangled on a string.

She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment the dismissal bell rang, and a surge of hope seized Luke's heart.

"Sorry, Ma'am, but I have to leave now. My mom's expecting me."

Miss. Belhz stood up, half-moon spectacles sliding down her nose, but Luke was already swinging his backpack over his shoulder.

"Wait, Luke-! We're not finished here-!"

"Sorry, Ma'am," Luke answered hurriedly. "But my mom really needs me. If you decide to expel me, just send a letter. Thanks."

A harsh look flowered over Miss. Belhz's stringent features. He was certain she was about to spout some command when he reached the doorway, slipped through it, and snapped the door shut with a quickness so deft it must have been inhuman.

He hurtled down the corridor, ignoring shouts of protest, and melted in with the tide of students flooding towards the exit gate.

Once outside, he clutched his backpack tighter to him, ebbing away his anxiety with the relief that came from freedom. He gulped a breath of fresh air and tried to ignore the creeping discomfort that still lingered after being asked such personal questions.

_How are thing? At home, I mean. _

How could she even ask a question like that?

Luke gritted his teeth; her job was to teach, _not _get tangled in the messy ropes of his life at home, even if they were a bit frayed and blood-stained.

A woman like Miss. Belhz would simply jump to hasty conclusions, defining Andromeda as an alcoholic and an overall "bad mother," and lump Luke into the faceless mound of kids known as "dysfunctional."

Then a doctor in a spotless white smock would appear, and with his beaming, broadly fake smile, he would usher the two of them into rooms as white and spotless as his smock, force them to look at ink-spattered papers, talk about their feelings, and subscribe a bottle full of tasteless pills for them to swallow; a bottle full of synthetic happiness.

A cold pit formed in Luke's stomach. He would never let that happen. _Never._

He was half-way home when the feeling struck him. A faint, nagging sense of unease, stirring in his heart, just as the wind stirred through the chattering boughs of leafy trees. It was merely an echo of worry; a little voice scratching at his ear, speaking so low and softly that he could barely hear its call of distress.

Perhaps if it had spoken louder, Luke would have heard its death-words of crinkled notes, flashing knives, and blood on gray mattresses.

Instead he merely brushed it away, like a fly bobbing too close to his ear, and kept walking at a reasonable, easy gait.

He left it somewhere by a bed of trampled roses, singing faintly of suicide.

--

_Andromeda had been standing there for almost an hour, gazing into her silver-glazed reflection, remembering his face, the length of her fall. _

_It came to her in a sickening flash, like somebody shuffling black-and-white photos before her eyes in a blurring motion; how far she had fallen, how painful the crash._

_So ugly. _

_She pressed her fingers against the cracked, broken glass of the mirror, dull in the midday heat. _

_"I'm the murderer," she whispered, and that sealed her fate. _

_--_

When Luke entered the house, it was quiet.

His bag slid to the ground in a slow, gentle _thud _that echoed loudly and rudely in the fragile shell of silence that thickened around him.

Silence was not something common in this house; it was a place normally overflowing with the ragged cries of a woman, the clattering of beer bottles, the laughter of a madman, and shouting of a teenager, all clashing together in a jumbled crescendo of sound.

But now it was silent.

A quiet had crept into the house, leaking through the age-old cracks that slanted in the roof or the fissures riddled in the old brick walls, swallowing the crude shrieks and cracks and cries—like a snake slithering soundlessly before snapping its fangs over a loudly squawking parrot.

It settled over everything, dry, dusty, a heavy silence that muffled even the softest taps or thuds.

For some reason, it bothered Luke.

He pounded up the stairs, calling out for his mother, but his voice rang uselessly in the air, falling into the depths of the damning quiet.

Something was wrong. The voice that had tugged at his earlobe on a brightly-lit sidewalk had returned, now shrieking in notes so warped he could barely understand them. Only that something terrible was happening, something irreversible, and no matter how hard he worked, sweated, or bled, he could not prevent the nightmare from becoming reality.

His heart was crashing against his ribcage, as if demanding freedom from it. The rooms around him began to crawl; the ceiling caving in, leaving him to wallow in the illusory debris of destitute.

_Alone. _

_Why is everything so quiet?_

_Why is everything so hollow?_

His eyes were seeing the world through a veil of red-haze, smearing innocuous things with the taint of deep wrongness; a bloody handprint upon the face of something unmarked, innocent. His feet clambered down the hallway, a soundless noise in his ear, and in his mind froze the image of a woman whose eyes were so faded they had lost color.

_Empty._

_Where is the voice of his loved one? _

_Where is the voice of his mother?_

Luke stopped before the peeling body of a door, his fingers grasping loosely for it. Something was going to happen when he pulled it back; revealing the low, gray room that resided beyond. Something that would define him was about to take place; something that would shatter and remold him, break him into tiny pieces and then balance those shards in a precarious arrangement that might teeter and topple him.

_Broken._

_Was he ever whole to begin with?_

_Was he ever going to mend?_

Somewhere between the five mid-seconds when Luke reached out his hand and touched the doorknob, he told his thoughts to cut it out.

This powerful, sickeningly vivid emotion that assaulted him just couldn't be real. So, he had walked home, and the house was quiet. It really wasn't that vast of a calamity—just a mild anomaly that would be explained soon enough, in the simplest, most soothing of ways.

He would open the door and find his mother still sleeping.

Of course, as a child who had grown up in a hovel full of twisted nightmares-gone-real, he was prone to believe the worst had happened, and his mind stirred around anxiously to provide him with the right image, the right mood, the right setting. That was why the house around him looked strangely dim, and there was a faint acrid scent sliding under the door to his nose. It was simply his imagination.

_Doubtful._

_Where has his confidence gone?_

_Where is his strength?_

His fingers turned the knob, the door swung inward, and he saw something he never wanted to see.

--

_Minutes were forever, each second an eternity. Now that she was so close to the end she just wanted it over—done with—but she needed her legacy remembered; something torn and dirty and ugly. _

_Yet beautiful all at the same time. _

_Writing the note was painful, her antics often resulting to violent screams when the words wouldn't come, her fingers twitching and fluttering to the knife that lay at her side; silver guidance._

_Her fingers once slipped on the blade and the page was spattered with lovely red flowers; bright crimson gems. She crinkled the paper in her bloody white hand and knew it was perfect. _

_She thought of a wingless angel in the rain._

_The one who protected her._

_The one who was broken._

_The one whose life she almost took. _

_The one she promised to resurrect._

_She held the blade steady, moved it quickly and decisively. There was a sea of wet crimson, and then she was gone._

_--_

Only one word had been written on the paper, in bold, firm letters, chiseled so darkly that even his eyes could read it, although his vision swum about everything, seeing pulsing dots of red light.

But it settled on the note, locked on it, and couldn't be moved.

LUKE

It was the first time Luke had ever seen his mother acknowledge his name—call him anything other than "wingless angel" or when he was lucky, a breathy "love" or "darling"—and it would also be his last time.

Andromeda was dead.

Luke had the suicide note crushed in his fist, which had grown sweaty from its rigidness, but he would not loosen his fingers. He was lying on an old, scratchy mattress, his eyes wide and unblinking, heedless of the bright scarlet that streaked it with bloody rivulets.

He was heedless of the blood that splashed him as well, dulling on his clothes to rust-colored splotches, drying in his hair, smeared on his face and his neck and his hands. He was lying in a puddle of it—in a puddle of wrong, sticky crimson—letting it soak over him and sink into his skin, into his soul, where it would stain the shattered fragments of him forever.

One had clutched the note with fury; the other held delicately onto the cold, lifeless palm of his mother. It was a palm that connected to a thin, slender wrist—and on that wrist was a mark, a jagged mark that smiled crookedly on pale skin, much like the one on Luke's ankle, only deeper, and oozing ribbons of wet redness.

"Mommy, Mommy, Mommy…" His brain would not function, his tongue fumbled uselessly. "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy…"

He did not know how long he had been lying there. He did not know what time it was, if the sun was still watching, or if Lucas would return soon. He did not know if a world existed outside this dim, red-drenched hell he had fallen into, or if anyone else mattered other than this beautiful, demented young mother who had slit her wrists.

When he first entered there had been a lot of screaming, and crying—he brushed the hair from her face, felt foolishly for her pulse, shook her shoulders, sobbed into her neck. He whispered silly, childish things into her ear: that he was afraid of the dark, afraid of the monster that lurked under his bed; that he needed his mommy, so she simply had to come back.

Then the silence had swallowed his pleas, and he grew angry. He shouted words he didn't mean and snatched up something he didn't see, flinging it against the wall and breaking down into tears when he realized what it was.

_A bottle of red, red wine._

The bitterness fled him as quickly as it came, leaving him hollow and broken and completely worthless. He collapsed on the mattress and consented to dying along with his her, holding his mother's hand gently, stroking her hair, and pretending his heart could stop its rapid thumping if he only willed it to.

He lay there for a long, long time.

Luke only stirred from his daze when he heard the door creak open on the floor below him, coupled with the heavy trod of a foot marching over the threshold.

His stepfather was home.

Perhaps Luke should have run to his room and bolted it shut. Perhaps he should have raced down the stairs and attempted to punch Lucas's out, just for the sake of relaying his pain onto someone else. Perhaps he was wise to simply stay where he was, holding his dead mother in his tender grip, soaked to bloody rags.

Truth was, Luke was not thinking about anything as his stepfather walked up the stairs; nothing but the deadpan drums of his heart and a very, very early memory.

He was remembering a time when he was barely five, still small and quite gullible, and Lucas had conspired to tell him the story of the boogeyman. Luke didn't know how other children heard it, but to Lucas it was a monster made of faceless shadow, melting into the night but for its bright, silver gloves.

He had told Luke it came to cut out the hearts of little boys whose mothers had children with men they weren't married to.

But the boogeyman never killed you on the first night of its appearance, Lucas had explained conversationally. Just a rustle in the night, and the next morning you would awake with your name chiseled into the wall of your bedroom door. This was the omen that betokened your doom.

Of course, on that very night a shaken five-year-old Luke had heard a rustle, and the next morning there were letters carved into his door. For weeks he couldn't sleep, sobbing and causing panics when he was shoved into his bedroom, until Lucas finally relented with a sneer that it was _he_ who had carved his name into the door, and that the boogeyman didn't really exist.

What Lucas didn't know was that Luke remained sleepless for almost two weeks straight after that, still fearing, because it was easier to believe that his stepfather was the boogeyman than an actual human-being.

The thought was strangely stuck in his mind as Lucas reached the top of the staircase, calling out for Luke's mother with words that weren't her name. He stayed hunched to Andromeda's side, clutching her hand and the suicide note a littler harder.

After eternity, the door was pushed open, and Lucas was staring down at the pair of them.

An unreadable expression passed over his face, cold eyes sweeping over the red mass of mother and child, holding each other.

Then his lips moved upward.

"What's a matter, kid? Kill your mother?"

Luke jolted, the comment running through him like a knife running through a heart. He detached himself slowly from the sad, steadily stiffening remains of his mother, looking the man directly in the eye.

"No. You did."

The smile that pulled on Lucas's lips was sickening.

"Really, you think so? 'Cause, as far as I'm concerned, it was _you _she always said she hated."

"That's not—she didn't—"

But Luke's retorts were swallowed in a rush of pain that came with the truth in his stepfather's words. He threw a frantic glance at his mother, remembered the sketchy, crinkled suicide note growing sweaty in his palm.

_Luke, _the note had said. Just Luke.

And with a throb of horror, he saw all the times when Andromeda slammed the door in his face, raked her hand against his cheek, or screamed that she never wanted him He saw the bottles she threw at him while tears rolled down her face; saw the way she only loved him behind closed doors. He saw the bitterness and the anger and the resentment, how in her eyes he was just the memory of a man she could never have.

He saw her pain, her insanity, how he had tried to step up and fill the shoes of this man, only to fail miserably.

He saw her lying on the mattress, dead with jagged smiles cut into her wrists.

"I thought so," Lucas sneered, reaching up and fingering Luke's chin with his cold fingertips. "I'm your only guardian now. What _fun _we are going to have."  
And he raised his hand to knock the boy off his feet.

But at that moment something had clicked in Luke's mind—something so soft and insignificant it was like an inaudible breath—but it was that little chime that made Luke lift his own arm and block the blow.

Lucas looked shocked, his eyes widening. It wasn't that his stepson had never fought back before; it was only that in his bedraggled, despairing condition, he hadn't expected the boy to have any spirit left in him.

No matter. He swung his fist back and attempted to hit him in the gut.

But the fist never met its target. Luke's hand seemed to fly out of no where; snatching Lucas's arm in a blur and twisting it back painfully with a quirk of his wrist.

His eyes looked dead, shallow blue pools that had froze to a wallowing emptiness. Blonde hair hung before them, falling in a tide of golden strands that shone unnatural, almost godlike, in the gauze of shadow.

"Leave—me—alone," Luke said in a deadpan whisper. "You— will—_not—_hurt—me—or—my—mother—ever—again."

And with a shove that was definitely inhuman, he propelled Lucas's lank, powerful frame into the doorway, where his head knocked against the wall, a bruise blossoming like a black flower on his forehead.

For a full moment Luke simply stood there, all the breath leaving his lungs, staring at the slumped figure of his stepfather, unconscious, breathing thinly.

He had won. For the first time in his life, he had raised his own hand in defense, and he had _won. _All the word seemed to haze around him in a beguiling mystery of horror and wonder.

How had he won? Lucas was bigger than him, stronger than him, more experienced in the ways of combat. Yet, somehow, Luke's eyes had taken in his moves before he made him, his hands flashing in an arc of complex motion, catching Lucas's wrists and pushing him back with an impossible strength.

Where had it come from? Luke glanced down at his shaking white palms.

Well, he couldn't think about that now. Lucas would begin to stir at any second, and Luke didn't want to know what would happen if his newfound strength abandoned upon the man's awakening.

He sped into the bathroom and let the facet run; a long line of fizzing white water, sloshing against the rust-spotted bottom of the sink. He splashed it across his face, scrubbing away at the red that had settled into his skin, soaping his arms up to his elbows. His hair was still a bit dirty, but he would deal with it. He rushed into his bedroom and slipped into a fresher pair of clothes, jamming some extra soaks and shirts into a bag found beneath his bed. Now panting with nerves, he returned to his mother's bedroom, moving cautiously, then confidently when he realized Lucas had not regained consciousness.

He pawed through Lucas's pockets with an uncannily natural skill at pick-pocketing, and fished out as much money as he could find. He wasted no guilt on stealing money from a man who left him with bruises and nightmares for the better part of his childhood.

He dropped the measly supply in his bag, knowing that if he rationalized the money might last for about two days, if he was lucky.

Luke was hardly ever lucky.

He swung the bag over his shoulder, his heart pounding, and took a hard look around the room. The smell of blood was still coppery in his nose; the shadows outside painting cracked windows with a midnight hue, so that they glittered like dark, broken teeth.

One glance at his mother and he almost crumpled. He tossed the bag aside, his stomach in knots, and knelt over her, brushing red hair off her brow, his eyes burning with fiery tears.

_Tears. He was crying. _

This time he allowed his eyes to drip wet.

"Mommy, I'm sorry, so sorry," he gasped into her unhearing ear. "I wanted to save you and…and I love you so much. I'll love you forever, Mommy, even though you're not here anymore. I hope you found your palace on a mountain. And don't worry, because…somehow…I'm going to keep my promise and make you a new heaven, a better one. I haven't forgotten. I won't let you down again. I have to leave now, Mommy, but I still love you and I always will. I won't break my promise, like that other man did. I'm sorry you died because of me. I love you. I'll love you forever."

Luke stepped away from her, the tears running hot rivers down his cheeks, staring into the glassy, half-opened eyes of a woman who had died long before she cut smiles into her wrists.

He reached out two shaking fingers and closed those eyes forever.

Wiping the endless flow of moisture on his sleeve, Luke grabbed for his bag and ran to the door—in a swift, rapid gait—leaving behind him the rubble of a tormented childhood that would still haunt him, still live on, in his dreams.

The past never dies, he once heard, but Luke knew the strong could keep it buried.

The pain of yesterday would be his secret, the unknown of tomorrow his prized jewel.

He looked out into the darkling world outside, caught in the shadows of nightfall, the bustling of cars; the glowing string of streetlights as they flickered on. The future was unfurled before him, a vast array of possibilities that could end in happiness, tragedy, wonder, or more pain. It was up to the person to decide whether it was worth the risk.

Luke decided it was.

He stepped out the door, and was gone.

**A/N: **Next chapter contains Thalia and possibly Annabeth. (Probably Annabeth) Please wish me luck, because I'm a bit nervous about introducing her. The story's taking a big swing now—from Luke's home-life to his life-running-from-monsters.

Oh! And I did repeat the "Luke was hardly ever lucky" thing on purpose, if anyone wants to know. (I'm…not even sure why I mentioned that, truthfully. It's simply too late for me to be at a computer. It's dangerous, but I'm here anyway…) Please review! Comments always appreciated.


	7. Fate

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Rick Riordan does.

**A/N:** Whoa. Do you know I've never updated a story as quickly as I update this one? It's crazy. Anyway, thanks so much for all your reviews! Really keeps me going. Actually, I'm a bit nervous about this chapter. Enter Thalia…I hope I characterized her right.

Again, updated this _really _late, but I did read it over a few (million) times to check for mistakes. Somehow they always elude me. All comments are appreciated!

**Chapter Seven**

**Fate **

_Follow the road. _

_He does just that, plodding forward even when the sun reaches its pinnacle—a fiery blaze of heat that throws rays down like hot daggers. The soles of his sneakers are worn, rubbed away so completely that his feet can feel every bump, every crack, every imperfection riddled into the concrete. His clothes are grimy rags that cling to a tired body, stained and streaked and torn. _

_But he moves onward. _

_On the first night he collapses relatively close to that place he once lived—a few blocks away, only—settling in a nearby park, deserted in the dwindling colors of a dying sunset. The sky above is deep indigo, its darkness richening as the sun retreats, glowing on the horizon in a swirl of dazzling pink and bloody reddish-orange. The playground is basked in these dusky, fading colors, and as he falls into a rusted swing, he watches the day withdraw its light to the shadow of a night. _

_He no longer cries. _

_On the second night he sets himself down near a train station, intent on taking it in the morning, bundling his cold limbs close to his body. A bitter wind creeps up as the sky darkens; clawing at his face with sharp fingernails, running through his unkempt, dirty blonde hair. The bag is pressed against his chest, containing the precious little provisions needed for his survival. _

_Few strangers pass by, but those that do avert their eyes and pretend he isn't there. _

_He no longer counts the nights, but on this particular one he enters an unfamiliar setting, far away from the town he once lived—a place where the houses are grander and the windows sparkle with finely-lit candles. People stroll by in freshly pressed suits and expensive black dresses, laughing and waving hands heavy with diamonds and other bright jewels. They glare at him like he is a rangy dog and kick him to the curb, forcing him to huddle on the outskirts of homes, under the great arms of an ancient oak._

_The moonlight is dappled beneath a canopy of leaves. _

_Slowly, he dips into slumber. _

He awoke with a groggy yawn and a pulsing throb in his skull.

Luke blinked his eyes open, surveying his surroundings with disinterest as he stretched his stiff back, sore from leaning against the rough bark of a tree all night.

He had settled at the mouth of a wood, dim with thickening shadows, tangled with overgrown weeds, and muddled with excess trash. Luke hadn't enjoyed the prospect of sleeping by it—especially when he heard what was definitely the scurry of a rabid raccoon, planning on nicking his only stash of food—but it was less glamorous than the town nearby, and he was certain to avoid the disapproving sniffles of rich civilians here.

Luke frowned at the thought, pushing filthy strands of hair out of his eyes. The people back at home were proud, boastful things, glancing about with smug expressions, regarding others coolly when they fell out certain cliques or were separated from the main group. They openly detested scandal, and secretly adored it, thriving off of the interesting flare it gave to their otherwise uninteresting lives. They held their heads as high as they held their standards, lofty and strong, and were tightly packed creatures; always craving an enemy to rear against, someone who was different—someone to talk about, someone to excommunicate, someone to hate.

That person had been Luke's mother, and his birth had been the scandal that blotted their thoughts with hidden delight.

But this town was different, Luke learned immediately.

The people here swaggered about in fancy clothing and drawled in lazy voices—beautiful women hanging on the arms of handsome men—laughing idly and smiling breezily, caring nothing for personal standard unless it included the latest fad, the newest car, the nicest house. They created their own dazzle, lived in self-manifested splendor, and needed no fixed person to obsess and ridicule for amusement. They danced and drank and flirted and mired themselves in so much scandal that nothing seemed to shock them—

That man wasn't her husband? How overdone. She found him with another woman last night? Old news. So he knows he's the father? About time.

Crowds of people came together with glittering smiles and exuberant kisses, clutching friendly hands and giggling, then turned to the next person and whispered hateful things about those they just embraced.

There was no need for loyalty, fixed groups, certain standards: As long as your pockets were stuffed with green paper, someone would always be there to pat your shoulder or lick your boot. As long as life was drenched in those crumpled green slips, there would always be people to talk about, parties to attend, and hangovers to suffer after a night of liquor.

These people would not have sneered at Andromeda as an adulteress, but would have scorned her for lack of money.

In the end, it was all the same to Luke—he was still unwanted, and that was all that mattered.

_Just keep moving, _he told himself. _Never look back, and one day you'll find the place you belong._

It was the same wisp of dream Luke often focused his thoughts on; random bits of fantasies so wonderful that their chances of happening were slim to none.

How could a boy with nothing but a knapsack and the tattered clothes on his back ever truly belong anywhere? Who would take him in? No one was ever going to want an adolescent vagabond with messy blonde hair and an even messier background.

His reading skills were hampered, his educational record barely touched high school, and he spent most of his life with a criminal stepfather, unable to rescue his suicidal mother.

_Mom. _A cold pit formed in Luke's stomach, even as he forced away his guilt and sadness. He was determined to bury his past. Of course his mother would be remembered—he would preserve her memory in the most beautiful, glorious of lights—but he couldn't dwell on the sad fragments of yesterday. It would drive him insane.

Despite the hindering odds, Luke often found his thoughts wandering over hopeful things. He had seen too much darkness, too much corruption, for someone so young: he needed to latch his heart onto something innocent, something as fresh and pure as newly fallen snow.

He needed to _believe _in something, or else lose himself to the jagged smiles that cut into his mother's wrists.

Luke trudged a litter deeper into the wood, grimacing as his foot sank into…something, but it was not pristine dream he was looking for. Instead, he felt soft, wet dirt ooze over his laces. A mud puddle. Excellent.

His luck was getting better already.

Luke was just about to head back to the town, hoping to find a train station to spend his last four bucks on, when he heard a sound.

It was a hissing crack, like a great amount of fire snapping towards the heavens, and the slow, heavy trod of something huge lumbering over fallen tree trunks and breaking them clean in two. A quicker set of footsteps followed the noise, as if something much swifter and lighter was scrambling away from the cumbersome…_thing. _

Luke's heart began to pound. What was going on?

"Get back!" a girl screamed from somewhere in the trees. "Get BACK! I've—I've got you cornered—"

A jolt went through Luke's whole body, shoving him into motion as he pushed between tall trunks of trees and stumbled over fat roots gripping into the dirt.

Someone was in trouble.

He was weak, malnourished, and tired; he had been walking for days with little rest and his head fluttered uncomfortably when he exerted himself too much, but someone was screaming and whatever was pursuing the speaker sounded too large to be fended off alone. He couldn't just walk away.

Luke followed the low growls and high shrieks, twisting through the black branches overhead, plunging himself into the semidarkness that came from the netted foliage of giant oaks. His deft feet danced over the gnarled roots and crumbled twigs, sprinting over choked tangles of weed and prickly huddles of bushes. His lungs burned and a spiky branch whipped out of no where like the skeleton of a hand, raking at his cheek with long-dead, rotten fingernails. He felt a cut sear against his skin, the warm ooze of blood dribble down his chin. Still, he kept moving, desperate to reach the source of the commotion.

The sound was getting louder now. He could hear the rapid intake of the girl's breath; the deep rumble of what must be a horrible beast snarling. His heart pounded harder.

It occurred to Luke that this may simply be an illusion—just a deranged mirage manifested from a mind that lived off of cheap candy bars and slept sparingly and fitfully.

But what if it wasn't? The girl would surely die.

Luke emerged into a clearing, his breath panting in his throat, and what he saw truly made him believe his nerves had finally gotten the best of him.

There was the girl he heard scream, backed against a tree, pointing what really looked like a bow and arrow at a growling black mass. He couldn't see her that clearly in the shadows, but she looked slender, clad in all dark clothes, something sharp and silver flashing on her wrist. Her arm never twitched as she fixed the arrow on her opponent, and when she jerked her head slightly he caught a glimpse of incredibly blue eyes.

But Luke's own eyes settled on her for a mere moment only; they were far too quickly drawn to the unbelievable creature that was hunched before her, its massive haunches held high in the air and its huge head bent low, as if prepared to pounce.

It was…a dog, yet unlike any dog Luke had ever seen.

For one thing, it was about the size of a boulder, with a muzzle as long as his arm; slobbering gums were pulled back to reveal a line of jagged, pointed teeth spattered with a redness that definitely wasn't kibble. Its tail thrashed—a huge, powerful thing that writhed like a python—knocking a dent into a nearby tree, which creaked then toppled, sending hundreds of pounds of timber crashing through the wood. Its eyes glinted with a terrible, hellish gleam, paws with blades for claws digging deep into the earth.

And the girl had a thin, twig-like arrow trained on its nose.

She was going to die.

Luke broke away from the shadows of the trees, stepping into the clearing with an audible _crunch _of his feet against dead leaves. The dog's ears twitched, but kept its bloody eyes fixed on the girl.

Luke tensed for a millisecond, his mind racing.

Then a totally irrational idea seized him.

"HEY!" he shouted, and the thing finally swung its head in his direction.Luke pressed his back against the trunk of a tree, his heart leaping in his chest, banging against his ribcage like a terrified prisoner rattling the bars of his cell. There was no way he could survive this. The creature advanced hungrily—what must have been eight hundred pounds of matted fur and knife-sharp teeth—and Luke was standing there with a tattered knapsack and his bare hands.

But he couldn't just let it slay that girl. He didn't know her, but she deserved to live; perhaps she had a family somewhere, or plans, or a dream ahead of her. Perhaps someone would miss her.

Or perhaps someone wouldn't, but that only made Luke settle firmer in his stance. He knew what it felt like to be unwanted; knew what it was like to curl up in a corner and feel completely worthless, low, staring into the faces of tall strangers who only sneered and turned away.

He knew how it felt to look in the mirror and see nothing.

No one deserved to feel that way; whether this girl had everything, whether she had nothing, it was be unfair to have her end with the grizzled maw of a hound gnawing at her remains. He couldn't bear the thought of this girl lamenting, as she died, that no one would ever miss her, ever thought to save her, and that she had simply faded away in the must-covered soil of a lonely wood.

He couldn't bear the thought of someone suffering the pain he had suffered.

He would save her, even if he died in the attempt. If people wanted her, she could return to them; if people didn't want her, he would prove to her that they were wrong—someone _did _care enough for her life. He did.

Not every face was the face of a criminal.

He would much rather save a life than see one taken.

_Leak a little bit of light back into a shadow-stained world. _

All this streaked through his mind in under one second, a jumbled blur of thought, as the creature prowled forward, its mighty jaw unhinged. With a start, Luke saw something hot and orange-red burning deep in the depths of its throat.

_Fire. _

This thing had _fire _lapping against the inside of its neck.

Now he was certain he had gone crazy.

It lunged, and somehow Luke's reflexives saved him, sending him darting towards his left while the creature's paws ripped into the tree-trunk he stood before a mere moment ago.

Overhead he heard the girl screaming, an arrow whizzing straight over his head and impaling the trunk of an already seriously mangled tree, right above the head of the beast.

The animal seemed angry to have missed its prey. It pummeled after him, Luke sprinting and sidestepping with an agility he didn't know he possessed, the dog snarling and flaring fist-sized nostrils.

But Luke's head was reeling. He knew that this couldn't last forever, no matter how swift his moves: his breath was coming out in ragged pants and the animal was snapping razor-sharp jowls at him. He would tire before the beast did, or it would get lucky and snag him. He needed a weapon. Something. Anything.

There was a glint in the dull dirt, something silver in the shadows, and Luke rushed for it, his body tumbling as he reached out a desperate hand. The creature howled with unsatisfied bloodlust, bounding after him with paws so large the whole ground quaked from its impact. He felt its hot breath on his neck, the uncomfortable closeness of flames bristling past his skin.

Then a claw raked against his leg.

Luke screamed, more out of sheer panic than pain, because he was still a little ahead of the monster, and it was only the very tips of a paw that grazed him. Still, his leg blazed, and the nails were so honed that had they come any closer, Luke knew he would have lost the limb. He was panting hard, his mind stirring and his vision flickering from overexertion; he was tired from lack of sleep and hungry from lack of food.

Behind him the creature howled. Luke threw his head back and saw an arrow sprout from the creature's thigh; it looked like the girl had finally made her target.

But the injury wasn't enough to hinder the beast, only anger it further. It leaped back towards the girl, snarling and baring teeth that dripped red with bloody salvia. Her hand flew to her quiver, but with a frantic grope of her hand she realized that she was out of ammunition.

That was when Luke's hand found the thing glinting in the dirt.

He lifted it with a panicked heave, his muscles screaming, and saw that he had just pulled a sword from the ground.

_A sword?_

Luke didn't understand how it happened, but there it was, its silver blade gleaming like a ray of moonlight in the darkness. Shadows scattered away from its shine, and its worn hilt glimmered a dull, faux gold in the night. It looked old, but sharp, and hopefully useful.

Luke hefted it higher, and was surprised that it slid easily into his grip, weathered but oddly fitting in his sweaty palms. He never thought handling a sword would be this easy, but his limbs seemed to relax at the weight, and everything flowed naturally as he moved with it.

The creature lurched at the girl with a roar, Luke swooped the sword in a rapid arc, and suddenly its ugly, snarling head was soaring through the air.

Luke's eyes fell to the blade. It dripped dark with the stain of black-reddish blood.

He had killed it.

The last thing he saw was the bulky, muscled body of a dog vanishing in chunks of disintegrating light, the sight of a girl with ragged black hair yelling at him, and the total darkness that consumed his mind as he passed out.

--

For the second time that day, he awoke with a groggy yawn and pulsing throb in his skull.

Only this time he lay on what felt like a bundle of sheets, something thin and comfortable thrown over him. It was considerably more pleasant than his last position, but as he tried to sit up, a sharp pain bolted down his neck, and he fell back against the makeshift bed, groaning.

"It's about time you woke up," a voice called over the pounding in his head. "At first I thought you died, but you were still breathing."

"Wha…what?"

His eyes drifted to the source of the noise. There sat the girl he just saved, poking morosely at a fire with an irritable jab of her stick. Now that she was up close, he could see that her clothes were punk-style and obviously expensive. Her raven hair had been yanked into bristly spikes all around her head, and she was wearing so much eyeliner that the black streaks beneath her eyes would have been noticeable a foot away.

But it was those eyes that caught him the most—they were startling: electric blue and so bright and pure they seemed almost unnatural. Even in total darkness, Luke had a feeling those eyes would glow.

They were angled at him furiously now, her mouth bent in a frown.

_"What _did you think you were doing?" she grumbled.

Despite his soreness, Luke felt a bit of anger touch him. He just risked his life to save this girl, faced something people only saw in nightmares, and here she was scowling at him, like he had just tried to rob her. She didn't even seem to appreciate it.

"What did I think I was doing?" he echoed drowsily. "I think I was just saving your life! That thing was going to kill you."

The girl stamped her foot heatedly, as if she had expected this response.

"I had it under control! Everything was fine until _you _barged in, making it go all crazy—"

"It had you backed against a tree!" Luke struggled into an upright position, brushing blonde strands out of his eyes. "You had _one _useless arrow at its nose! First it would have snapped it between its teeth and then it would have snapped _you _between them!"

"Yeah, well, one of those useless arrows ended up being _pretty darn_ useful when it hit the thing in the leg! You know, before it bit _your _leg off!"

There was a storm raging in the girl's blue eyes, like dark thunderclouds clashing in cerulean skies, searing-white lightening flashing dangerously as she fixed him with a glare so severe it pinned him to the ground.

Luke receded into heavy breathing under that stare, frowning and glaring back.

"You're…right," he said finally. "If you hadn't shot that arrow, I would be dead. Thank you."

The girl opened her mouth, as if to shout a burning retort, then shut it just as quickly.

"What?" she asked, a bit warily.

"I said thank you," Luke repeated. "The arrow was definitely useful. But you have to admit, you couldn't have killed that thing by yourself. The most you could have done was hit it in the nose, it would have gotten angry, and then pounced at you. It had you cornered against a tree; you wouldn't have had any time to do anything else."

His smile turned into a grimace as he attempted to sit up straighter.

"We needed each other," he finished.

The girl was looking at him curiously now, some of the harshness leaving her features as a slightly softer, warmer light wavered in her jewel-bright eyes. There was something odd, almost uncomfortable, about the way she gazed at him; it was like she was studying his face, searching every nook and cranny of his pale skin, his light eyes, his fair hair. Her mouth twisted—somewhere between a smile and a frown—and Luke rubbed his neck uneasily, pretending her gaze wasn't so focused.

"You're welcome," she answered at length. Then a grin cocked her lips. "So, you think you can rush in and steal the spotlight just because you're good-looking?"

"Steal the spotlight?" Luke blurted out angrily. "No one was even watching and—wait. What did you just say?"

The girl snickered beneath her dark bangs, but as he glanced up at her the giggles subsided, her face flushing slightly.

"Okay, so you're _really _good-looking," she mumbled, her eyes falling to her feet. She sighed and looked back up. "You're right. I would have died without your help. Thanks for saving my life."

For some reason, her first comment seemed to pass right over Luke's head. Maybe it was because no girl had ever said anything like that to him and he didn't know how to respond, or maybe it was because he was so weak and tired he figured it was just a delusion.

Heck, maybe everything was a delusion. Maybe he would wake up and find himself on the rotted floor of his house, Lucas standing over him with his fist raised and—

"Hey," the girl's voice broke through his reverie, oddly soft. "Are you alright? You just went all stiff and pale."

Luke shook his head, glancing back at her.

"Yeah," he said. "I…I'm fine. Just….thinking." He blinked, rubbing his temples. "And you're welcome. For saving your life, I mean."

The girl grinned again; Luke thought he liked the sight of it. Something about her smile was genuine and dazzling, like the reflection of a strong, righteous heart; a proud display of joy over something truly worth rejoicing over.

It wasn't like the demented smirk of a crazed stepfather, widening with the splatter of blood and growth of black bruises, breaking into peals of laughter as a switchblade glinted and he hit the hard floor.

It wasn't like the faded, desperate half-smiles of a woman who cried beneath jaggedly-cut bangs of red hair, scrambling her sliced-up hands over a white skirt, leaving red imprints like blurred flowers and throwing wild gazes in his direction, screaming, whispering, sobbing…

It was just a smile, pure and simple.

"I'm Thalia," the girl said abruptly. "Who are you?"

"I'm Luke," he answered, smiling palely into the fire between them. Its warmth was small, but pleasant on his face.

"So, Luke," Thalia began conversationally, stretching her arms behind her head. Luke noticed that the thing he had seen flashing on her wrist before was a bracelet studded with silver spikes; it looked very pricey. "What are you doing out here? Don't you have a home somewhere? What brought you here?"

Luke was struck by the outright queries, plunging him into ugly memories of an old, broken house, abusive men and suicidal mothers.

_Mommy. _

"A lot of reasons," he replied truthfully, albeit vaguely. He had not forgotten his vow to bury the past. Besides, it wasn't like he wanted to burden this girl with all his troubles. She had enough to deal with if monster-dogs were attacking her. "There was…no reason for me to be there anymore. No one wanted me. I didn't want to be there. So I left," He shrugged. "I'm not ever going back."

"Sorry to hear it," Thalia answered, poking at the fire again with her stick. The flames jumped a little higher. "I know how you feel. My mom didn't want me. All she does it go out with her stupid boyfriends and drink herself sick each night. The maids take care of her after she pukes, and then she does it again. I wasn't going to deal with it anymore. Plus, with all the _crazy _explanations I was getting…"

She shook her head tiredly.

A feeling touched down in the marrow of Luke's bones, deep, sad, and lingering. Beneath the shock that had frozen around him since his mother's death and the bitterness harbored toward both father and stepfather, he felt sorry for this scowling girl. He understood how scarring neglect could be, had felt it himself.

"That's horrible," he replied carefully. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well," she grumbled. Her bright eyes caught his face. "What was your mom like?"

Once again, Luke was struck by the forthrightness of her words. For one frightening, everlasting moment, he fell into memories of a woman who couldn't be defined. He thought about her colorless eyes and the songs she used to sing through his bedroom door's keyhole; how she loved him behind closed doors.

Other thoughts skittered around the rim of his mind, reminding him of when she threw empty bottles at him or screamed that she hated him from across the room. The times she wouldn't look at him. But those memories were so distant—she hadn't meant to do those things to him; she was just sad, just ill…

_He found her with open wrists and blood everywhere. _

A literal pain exploded in Luke's heart, borrowing deep into his arteries, sharp and searing; he lurched forward, his face near the dancing flames, almost gasping.

Thalia started, but he withdrew quickly, drawing short breaths and glancing around the wood with glazed, far away eyes.

"She…she was a wonderful mother," he finally stammered, before Thalia could ask him what was wrong. "A great mother, but she was really, really sick and she…she died. After that I left. No one else would want me back there. I wasn't going to stay."

Thalia's face was still, and Luke knew that in her mind she was painting the image of a woman fading on a white hospital bed, inflicted with cancer or some other terrible disease. She was probably figuring his life at home at been simple but peaceful, filled with the presence of a nurturing mother who flipped pancakes and read nursery rhymes. He made no move to correct her. Thalia had enough on her plate without heaping vivid descriptions of his suicidal mother onto it.

_Besides…_

Luke's jaw tightened. He was already beginning to admire this odd girl, with all her strength and boldness, but a part of him was still afraid she wouldn't understand. They seemed to have a lot in common, but mothers were something they differed on. He was apprehensive that if she heard the full tale, she would brand Andromeda the way others did: as a bad mother, prone to be violent and sometimes even insane, rambling and taking her bitterness out on her only child.

People didn't understand. He was her guardian angel, trying to protect her from the cruelties of the world, shield her from disapproving glares, keep her safe and sheltered.

_And he failed, failed hard and pathetic. Failed because he didn't have the wings to save her. _

But people wouldn't see that; they would only see the times when she told him to drown, because it was a beautiful way to die, or shouted that she never wanted him, because he was a memory of a man that haunted her. They would not understand why she said those things, why she was merely the victim…the words spilling from her lips were songs of sadness, not armadas of cruel jibing.

Luke had failed to save her, but he would at least save her memory.

_And anyway,_ Luke assured himself, _I'm not lying_. Andromeda _was_ a wonderful mother, in his eyes—and they were only eyes that saw her clearly.

Still, a sense of guilt brushed over him when he looked at Thalia. He really did like her, and she seemed to relate to so much of his plight; perhaps she would understand if he told her.

Maybe if this meeting was not mere coincidence, maybe if he got to know her a little better, he would tell her. After all, he doubted she had told him everything about her life. They had just met.

"That's really sad," she was saying awkwardly. She looked uncomfortable with the subject. "I don't really know what its like to lose someone you cared about that much, but it must be really hard. I…I'm sorry for that. Really."

Her blue eyes found his, and the pain in Luke's heart returned; he hastened to change the subject.

And suddenly it hit him, with the force of a ten-foot tidal wave.

Something no sane individual would forget to ask about.

Between waking up in strange surroundings, his argument with this girl, and tumbling back into memories of his mother, he had completely forgotten—

"What the hell was that _thing _anyway? Some crossbreed between a rabid wolf, a Rottweiler, and a Pit Bull? And why did you have arrows with you—how'd you get them? How do you even know how to use them? I thought they were only for sport now in days…at least around here."

Thalia sighed, her expression turning grim.

"I knew you were going to ask that eventually. If I tell you, you'll probably say I'm crazy."

Luke shrugged. "I already think _I'm _crazy. Shoot."

She tossed her head about fitfully, as if debating whether or not it was worth explaining the situation to him. She seemed to settle on the thought that it was.

"Alright, but don't interrupt until I'm done," Thalia warned, taking a deep breath in. Luke nodded. "I-lived-all-my-life-with-just-my-mom-never-knowing-who-my-dad-is-and-all-this-weird-stuff-kept-happening-to-me-like-I-could-see-things-other-people-couldn't-and-then-this-guy-in-wheelchair-shows-up-and-tells-me-the-Greek-gods-are-real-and-my-father's-Zeus." She stopped, gasping. "Is that a good enough answer?"

Luke blinked. "Could you…uh…repeat it?"

Thalia bit her lip, surveying him with almost desperate eyes, which didn't fit in her confident face.

"Please, Luke, I'm being serious. That thing we fought—that _you _killed—it was one of Hades' hellhounds. You see, my dad made this pact that he wouldn't have any more kids with mortals, but then he went and sired me anyway. So the other gods are mad that I exist. I wouldn't have believed it either, but this guy came to my school—Mr. Brunner—and he used to tutor me privately because I have dyslexia. He was the one that told me this: that all the ancient Greek myths are _real_ and _still going on today_!At first I thought he was nuts, and sometimes I still think he is, but it actually sort of made sense…the fact that freaky stuff kept happening to me, as if creatures were out to get me, and that nobody else saw anything. It's because I'm a half-blood and I can see through this thing called the Mist that—"

Suddenly she stopped, fixing him with a sharp, wide-eyed stare. Luke fidgeted a bit despite himself, partly because the blue of those orbs was so piercing, partly because he was beginning to think she was insane, even after implying that he wouldn't.

Still, he _had _seen that monster-creature, and no mix of breeding could explain why fire burst in smoldering plumes from its mouth. It was an impossible explanation for an impossible sight.

But it was more than just that. Something about her words stirred in his memory, crept up on him with frail remembrance; if he could only think back on it enough, something would make a lot of sense. But Thalia's wild clarification for all that happened muddled his thoughts. He couldn't think clearly.

And her staring was unsettling him.

"Uh…Thalia?"

"You're one of us," she whispered almost inaudibly, then shouted it to the shadows gathering around them. "You're ONE OF US!"

She threw her head back in raucous laughter, making Luke jump in surprise and fright. She looked back at him with exuberant, disbelieving eyes, studying every inch of his fair-featured face all over again, even pushing away her ragged black bangs to do so.

"Think about it, Luke," she said breathlessly. "This thing called the Mist stops regular mortals from seeing anything weird. But _you _saw the hellhound anyway! I bet you have dyslexia and ADHD. And you said you lived with your mom—but what about your dad? Did you know him? Did your mom ever talk about him? He must be one of the gods!"

She stared at him excitedly.

"Uh, I have no idea how you knew I had dyslexia and ADHD, but no, I didn't know my dad. My mom just said he was some really rich guy who left after—"

"She lied!" Thalia cut off, then bit her lip awkwardly when she realized how brash she had just spoken about a dead woman. "I mean, she didn't tell you everything, because you were probably too little to understand. Or maybe she was trying to protect you or something. But that doesn't matter—everything fits! Think about it, Luke: you live with only one parent, just like me, know nothing about your dad, just like me, and see hellhounds, just like me! You even killed one! You _have _to be a half-blood!"

Luke couldn't ignore the logic behind her words. He ran a nervous hand through his blonde hair, still trying to grasp at the loose memory that kept sliding through his fingertips like slippery ribbons of silk. His father was a mystery and he did see the hellhound. Casting a glance at the leave-strewn floor, he realized he witnessed a lot of odd occurrences he normally took as deliria after Lucas hit him too hard.

Dark things that used to stalk his steps at night, wrinkle-faced teachers that appeared out of no where, speaking in honey-thick voices, and flashing with leathery wings and claws when his head turned the other way.

Things he titled "his imagination."

And there was something else, too. Words…a memory…if he only remembered…

_"…a palace on a mountain, where everyone wears white silk and drinks red wine…" _

His body went rigid. Thalia kept talking in a high, animated voice, but he heard none of it, a whisper of someone else's words singing in his ears. He was somewhere else, lost in a reverie, recalling the feel of frail arms encircling him, the smell of sweet roses and sharp alcohol.

_"…your face reminds me of that man who left us. The one with little wings on his heels, love. He had elf-eyes…"_

Luke's breathing was shallow. In his eyes he could see a woman who spun pretty tales about things that weren't real; palaces on mountains, shoes with fluttering white wings. Things he could dream about. Things that he never even fathomed could be…

He thought about how she cried out for a man who left her—a man who was _special, _a man who could do _anything—_a man who flew away on winged shoes to a palace on a mountain.

"I know it's kinda hard to get," Thalia was explaining, her voice shattering through his thoughts. "I freaked out when I first learned too. But we're not the only ones! There are others like us, and now that we've found each other, neither of us has to feel alone."

He couldn't hear her.

"…A god? But…how…if he was…how could he….Mom? I…I understand now, I know now what you…I'm sorry…I'm sorry…Mom…"

Very stiff fingers prodded at his shoulders; he looked up to find Thalia with her hand lightly on his shoulder, an awkward, though sympathetic curve to her lips.

"Are you going to be alright?"  
Luke's eyes were far away as he gazed at her, the world blurring to an incomprehensible swirl of color. His tongue fumbled for words.

Everything made sense. Everything made sense now.

_Absolutely nothing made sense. _

"How can you know for sure?" Luke asked at her. "No mortals can see anything weird?"  
Thalia shook her head. "Not uselessly; unless you count our mortal parents, but that's probably because the gods revealed themselves to them. And sometimes they don't even do that."

"Not _uselessly?"_

Thalia bit her lip. "Mr. Brunner did say that _some _mortals—and I mean a _really_ rare amount—can see magical things through the Mist. It doesn't affect them for some reason. But everything else you said fits so perfectly it can't be that."

"Still…" Luke breathed out slowly. He couldn't believe he was taking this story seriously, but between all that happened in the last few days—in the last few _years—_ it almost seemed like sanity.

Almost.

And then there was his mother. It made his mother's words—

"There's one way we could find out for sure," Thalia said slowly, her eyes flashing. "Mr. Brunner…he gave me this stuff, food only gods and demigods can eat. If you eat it and everything's fine, then you're a half-blood. But if you eat it and you're not…"

"I'll die?" Luke asked, his gaze settling on the dark-haired girl with expensive punk clothing. Somehow he was numb to the words; an eerie calm that fallen over his brain upon accepting this crazy explanation. He knew that should have scared him, but all he felt was a rising urge to know who he really was.

"I'll try it," He said, his voice steady. "I need to know."

Thalia glanced at him a bit skeptically.

"There's being brave," she stated. "And then there's just being stupid."

"Would _you _do it?"

For a moment Thalia just stared, her face a blank portrait, then a slow smile spread across her pink lips.

"Yeah, I would do it."

She reached out and grabbed a bag that Luke hasn't noticed before—one considerably nicer than his, with a precious logo printed on the fine dark fabric. Luke didn't know much about Thalia's life, but he figured she was loaded.

She fished a small flask out of the knapsack, corked tightly and filled with a shining gold liquid. If any part of Luke still felt doubtful about this whole insane story, the sight of that drink dispelled it. He could sense something pure and powerful radiating from it, something that made it irresistible to him; just one drop of that golden fluid would be more satisfying than the most magnificent feast.

Thalia uncorked it, her eyes sweeping between him and the bottle.

"Are you sure you wanna do this?"

"Yeah."

He took the flask from her hand, which felt strangely cold, and placed it to his lips. A thick, heavy aroma curled from the bottle in a delicious tendril and tickled his nose. He was seized with a sudden recklessness to swig the entire thing in one gulp, but the pounding of his heart cleared his thoughts. He might die.

For a mere second he hesitated, in which the face of his stepfather flashed, laughing, and then he tilted the liquid into his mouth.

Peaches.

Luke withdrew the bottle from his lips, staring down at the golden drink that swilled and swished within the container. That was not what he expected. Something sweet, perhaps, but not the simple flavor of a very ripe peach.

He thought one sip would flood into his mouth with a million flavors, all sugary, sour, and fizzing, spiced with every taste the world had to offer and no taste this planet could ever conjure up at the same time. Something you couldn't pinpoint; something that couldn't be described.

Instead, it was simply peaches.

And he liked it better that way.

Luke rarely ate peaches—as good ones were pretty expensive and he never had the time or money to buy one—but he always felt soothed when he bit into the fruit, the thin juice trickling everywhere, the light fuzz brushing against his fingertips, the taste of the soft yellow flesh in his mouth.

He could never quite understand it, but he thought it was connected to one of his earliest memories, before his mother had even cut her hair; it hung off her shoulder in a long, swinging red braid, neat and even. She still looked tired, sad and alone, but she did not seem as fractured as he knew she would become. Through the haze of his memory, he remembered crying once, and instead of her usual response of screaming at him to stop, she had handed him the round, supple fruit.

Somehow, this drink seemed to be that exact peach—the _very _one his mother handed him, all those years ago—squeezed into a golden drink…

"What is this?" Luke asked, glancing down at the flask. He quelled the desire to quaff the rest down.

"Ambrosia," Thalia explained, snatching it from his grasping fingers. "Nectar of the gods. How do you feel?" She was studying him again with those intense blue eyes.

Luke flexed his fingers. He suddenly felt revitalized, all his senses buzzing just below his skin, his soreness ebbing away and his heart pumping a little stronger. His limbs felt less stiff, and the pain of his bruises seemed to be shrinking.

He was more focused, more steady, more alive than he had felt in weeks, perhaps years.

"I'm great," was his only response.

Thalia broke out into ecstatic giggles again, her dark, spiky bangs bobbing all around her face as she did so.

"This is excellent!" She grinned. "Now I _know _I'm not nuts! Either that, or we're both nuts—and I won't mind going to the loony bin if I have some company!"

Luke smiled a bit worriedly at the girl's laughing fit, watching her almost fall into a pile of dead leaves as she threw her head back in joyous rapture; but he understood her mirth.

He imagined hearing a ridiculous story that would alter his life forever, something that would separate him from the rest of humanity, and then being left to dwell on these wild theories, always questioning what he thought was real. He imagined doubting a world that he already highly doubted; a world troublesome enough without heaping the dangers of meddlesome, omnipotent forces and bloodthirsty mythological beasts.

Luke glanced down at his fingers, still tingling in the aftereffect of the drink. So, his father was a god; the embodiment of some sort of infinite, immortal power he could never hope to comprehend.

A god.

And he was a demigod.

Part god.

Half-god.

Not fully human.

_No. _

In a rush of thought, all the previous calmness that had settled eerily into his brain shattered, exploding in an array of pure, intensely pulsating panic.

_A demigod? Him? _

But if his father was a—and if _he _was a—how could he have—how could his life had been so—

Luke thought about the derelict building he was raised in and the people he was forced to associate with: people like Lucas, with wicked smiles and brutally glowing eyes, switchblades and fists. He thought about the numerous schools he flunked out of, the way trouble always seemed to swallow him whole and spit him out distastefully with bruises, enemies, or an expulsion.

He thought about how he failed to save his mother.

_A demigod? _

And if his father was a god—if he was _that _almighty—how could he—?

It was impossible; simply impossible. This girl was tricking him with her peach-flavored drinks and smooth, convincing talk about ridiculous things, even if every word she spoke fit into his life like the missing puzzle-piece needed to complete a self-portrait.

It was insane.

"Thalia, there has to be a mistake."

She looked up at him, the laughter dying in her eyes.

"What?"

"There has to be a mistake. I—I can't be part-god. I just…can't."  
Something wry twisted Thalia's lips; it might have been a smile, but seemed too sharp and sarcastic to mirror such a thing.

"Yeah, that's what I said when Mr. Brunner told me. You just have to wait for it to sink in. I mean; I haven't totally accepted it yet, and it's been a few months. But you drank the ambrosia, didn't you? And you fought the hellhound. What are you going to do—ignore all that stuff? The world is not safe for us half-bloods; especially now that you know. You have to be on your toes."

"You don't understand. My life…it isn't the life of a demigod."  
Thalia just continued to sport that hard grin of hers.

"Neither was mine. You'd think having dyslexia and ADHD are qualities half-bloods _wouldn't _have, but most of us are born with it. Mr. Brunner says we have dyslexia because our minds are meant to read Ancient Greek, not English. And we have ADHD because those are our hyped-up senses. You know—the kind of stuff that keeps us alert during a fight."  
Luke merely blinked at the response. He let out a slow, steadying breath, trying to quiet the echoing drumbeats of his panicked heart. Thalia was making sense, but he couldn't shake the image of his dead mother, his crumbled home.

"Do you know where I lived?" he murmured. "That place a bit off from here. Actually, a _way _off from here. Back in that fenced area where people live in tenement homes."

He didn't need to specify any further.

"Oh!" Thalia almost jumped in surprise, her features freezing in a distasteful expression. "You lived _there?" _A slightly unpleasant note peeped in her voice as she spoke the last word.

Luke gave a weak half-smile. "Yeah, I grew up in the slums of Virginia."

A heavy blush bled into Thalia's pale cheeks, creeping all the way up to her ears in a silent, darkening blush. Luke watched as she fidgeted, her fingers clenching and unclenching in the awkwardness of the situation, brushing over her expensive, purposely shredded jeans. She tugged on a lock of dark hair and looked at him with apologetic eyes.

"I'm not—I mean, uh…" She sighed. "Obviously, I didn't live around there. But…I don't care. Really. That's why I left home; I'm sick of snobs."

Luke grinned; a natural, easy curve sliding across his mouth. He really liked this girl.

"I can tell. You don't really dress like a princess, if you know what I mean."

"Hey!" Thalia's eyes danced playfully. "This is cutting-edge style. Frilly skirts and tutus are _so _lame."

Luke snickered, casting a long gaze across the darkling woods, noticing how even the tiny stars of light seeping through the gaps in the foliage were melting into a dusty, amber-tinted hue. The shadows lurking in the branches grew heavier around leaf-clustered branches. Dusk was falling fast.

"So, if we really are…half-bloods, what are we going to do? I mean, that guy—Mr. Brunner or whatever—he just told you all this stuff and left?"

Thalia's lighthearted expression sobered.

"Actually, he told me to wait up. See, there's this special camp for half-bloods…some place that's supposed to be safe for us. We get to train and live with other demigods. He told me he was going to send a guide but the person never showed; I got bored of waiting and my mom was driving me nuts. So I just left. Part of me thought he was crazy anyway, but I took all the provisions he gave me just in case. Turned out to be pretty useful: I was lucky my mom signed me up for archery lessons as a little girl, even though I complained about it." She held her eyes level with his. "And you were pretty cool with that sword. When Mr. Brunner gave it to me, I thought it was too heavy…but you used it like it was the easiest thing in the world."

Luke shrugged uncomfortably. Truthfully, he couldn't explain why the sword had settled so easily in his grip, flowed so smoothly with his movements. It was like the blade was a mere extension of his arm, rather than a separate weapon. Never before did something meld so perfectly with his person; it was like a chip of his soul had been taken long before he knew it was gone, and now that it returned, he felt more whole.

But he would have felt sappy saying that.

"Beginners' luck, I guess. Or something to do with the ridiculously huge hellhound about to bite your head off."

A smiled teased Thalia's lips; then she stood up, brushing bits of dead leaf and twig of her torn pants.

"I'm glad I met you, Luke. Maybe my dad's looking out for me after all."

Luke stood up as well, noticing for the first time that he was a head taller than Thalia, perhaps a few years older. He found it odd that someone with such bursting personality could have such a small stature.

"I'm glad I met you too, Thalia, Daughter of…uh," He blinked confusedly. "Who's your dad again?"

Her smile seemed plastered.

"Zeus."

"Whoa. That's the big guy, right?"  
"That's the guy who's ignored me for twelve years of my life," Thalia remarked bitterly. "But that's not important right now. Will you travel with me? I remember Mr. Brunner saying the camp is somewhere in Long Island. We don't need a guide; you and I can cut across country. What do you say?"

Luke surveyed the individual before him; a slender girl raised in a rich environment she scorned, proud of her purposely tattered, punk-style clothing and overly dark, heavy layers of eyeliner. She held herself aloft, brilliant eyes sparkling, and radiated a sense of power and self-assurance he could never possess. There were strong virtues imbedded in her core: courage, confidence, and a vigorous fighting spirit.

She was all the things he wanted to be.

Luke grinned. "Count me in."

**A/N:** So…how was it? quakes while waits for reactions Oh! I—er—just wanted to make it clear that I'm **NOT **trying to hint at Luke/Thalia. The whole "good-looking" scene…I just think its something she'd be gusty about to say; reminds me of the scene in The Titan's Curse, when she whispered to Percy that Apollo was hot. I guess you can take it as Luke/Thalia if you want, but it's not my intent.

Anyway, please **review! **I really appreciate it.


	8. Chaos

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Rick Riordan does.

**A/N:** I know, I know, I KNOW—I'm so incredibly late with this, and I throw myself at your knees and beg for mercy instead of whippings. You see, unfortunately enough, this huge wall rose before me whenever I clicked into the file of this story, and that wall was called—WRITER'S BLOCK. Finally, however, I managed to triumph over the formidable thing, and can present you with this.

So, I truly hope you can forgive me, and sincerely feel bad for keeping you waiting. I promise that I WILL finish this story. And I'll try to update sooner. -

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this. It's a bit…odd…but it's supposed to be, given their main opposition in this chapter.

Oh, and before you can begin, I must give a **formal thanks and dedicate** this (very long) chapter to **two **people: First is to a very close friend of mine who likes to be known as **Isabelle**, who is genius enough to suggest her favorite goddess as the main antagonist of this chapter, and spurred me to writing it again. Next is dear, dear **Phyco Girl **whose wonderful PMs, support, and great advice got me to pick myself up, out of writer's block, and keep going. This chapter wouldn't have been written without you guys!

Okay…sorry for the really long a/n. Without further adieu, here you go:

Chapter Eight

Claim

_There is a bond between them. _

_Sometimes he laughs, sometimes she smiles, sometimes he frowns, sometimes she screams. They are standing at two ends of a double-sided mirror, staring into the opposite sides and seeing the reverse of their reflections—and yet seeing the similarities as well; subtle things that mingles and makes dual reflections whole. _

_There is a bond between them. _

_They fumble down roads without directions, sleep in plastic chairs on rattling busses, linger by nice restaurants and pretend to be well-off while they dine on potato chips before the flicker of a weak fire. _

_She is the loud, boisterous one; strong and brave and confident. _

_He is the silent, pondering one; solemn and protective and loyal. _

_She is the one who talks; painting portraits of a pretty world she once called home—a world that was empty—and he is the one who listens, sympathizing, and holding his own secrets to his heart. _

_He seldom mentions what has transpired in his lifetime before her, but trusts this girl and answers her every inquire truthfully; he wishes, even tries, to be as open as her, but somehow his emotions are timid ghosts, shying away from exposure, and try as he might they cannot be described._

_He struggles with his memories and she knows it: knows it by the way his eyes glaze when he murmurs something of yesterday, by the way his face goes rigid when she asks certain questions and receives only short, enigmatic answers. _

_She knows it by the way he tries to tell her things—random blurts of "my mom used to sing" or "she was married to a man I didn't like"—but the words always catch in his throat and he can't say them as her eyes find his face. She knows it is not because he feels no connection to her, but because his soul has been damaged and sealed shut, making it difficult for him to express the feelings he so desperately wants to convey._

_The fact that he tries means there is a bond. _

_It doesn't matter. She understands him without words; feels the heaviness of his loss without the spoken explanation of it. She is the one capable of speaking of what happened, and though he strives to unleash his own past, he is unable. It does not dampen the closeness that ties them together; rather, she thinks it strengthens it. _

_One look into his eyes and she knows all she needs to know. _

_Silent, he is the first thing that has been steady and constant in her life, always there, always protecting. _

_And, without words, he tells her that she is the same for him._

He woke from a recurring nightmare.

In his dream, Luke sat once more on the floor of his kitchen, only this time long chains stretched from slots in the walls to the manacles locked around his wrists, coming from all directions, like the threads a spider weaves for its web.

The manacles themselves were old, rusted things, though try as Luke might they would not shatter, and his attempt to free himself only chafed his exposed skin, leaving bloody patches.

He remembered how the red of the wounds shone so brightly in his dim quarters, and how the fact worried him, because somehow he thought the lurid hue would attract some horrible visitor.

It did. Out of no where, Lucas seemed to slide from the shadows, dressed in odd, old-fashioned garb he never wore in real life: a stiff, high-collared jacket with a crimson jewel at his throat, the delicate chain of a watch leaking from his pocket, and dazzlingly silver gloves on his hands.

The boogieman. In his dream, Lucas was the boogieman.

It was only then that Luke realized his name had been carved all along the kitchen walls—in large, jagged letters almost akin to his mother's suicide note—and as Lucas slipped out the slender, white knife, a fit of unparalleled terror seized him. He thrashed and gnashed his teeth in agony, yanking on the chains, screaming in foreign tongues he never spoke before, ancient words, power words—

_"Resurrect me, Father, resurrect me! Break the chains of shame and mortality and cleanse my soul of its scabs…..bring forth from the grave your most unfortunate child; resurrect me, Father, before I fall to sinners and demons….."_

These words, in another language.

But there was only a death-silence that surrounded Luke, filled with a horror so thick it sucked all the air from the room, from his lungs, magnifying his senses tenfold: he saw every acute angle of his drear prison, smelt the must and cobwebs, heard the steadied shuffle of Lucas's feet.

But as the alleged "boogieman" reached him, wearing a smile that was impossibly cracked and demented, the knife held high, an erratic shiver ran across the room, and he felt the cool fingers of his mother touch his neck. (For, in his nightmare, he _did _feel—no matter how many skeptic looks might be cast at the idea.)

There she stood before him, a splendid figure in white robes; her hair swinging about her face like a veil of reddest wine. Her pale skin was unscarred and unmarked with any abrasion or slight bruise that once mottled it in reality: she was clean and breathtaking, a string of pearls around her neck, glittering and bright.

The world around them froze. Lucas stood still like a statue.

He called out to her, in that same, foreign tongue, but she merely laughed with a voice like music; Luke noticed he could not meet her eyes, no matter how desperately he tried, wishing to see the color of orbs no longer polluted with hopelessness.

"Silly boy," she sang, throwing her fabulous shower of hair behind her. "Make me a boat where the smiles are everlasting, and the people a dream. Make me a ship full of paradise, and call me a princess. Then chain me to the front of it, so that I may never leave. Chain me to the front of it….so that the Kraken mightn't get me….chain me…to….paradise…"

She began to shimmer—like a beautiful reflection in a pool disturbed by a stone flung by a mischievous child—and Luke saw the threads of her shiningly white gown fade.

He screamed out to her again, but her laugh rose in high cadence, and when she held out her wrist to him, he saw the ugly line she slashed across it, rough and disturbing, curving slightly with blood caked in its corners. It was the only thing that spoiled her perfect image, the only string that tethered her to the horrors of life.

And it was his fault, he suddenly reasoned, _his _fault that this blemish should haunt her…

As Luke's eyes fell upon it, her face went rigid, and a shadow of her former self flitted across her countenance, darkening lovely features. She brought the wrist up to her face, and despite his pleas, pressed it against her eyes, smearing her lids with the blood.

"Make me a paradise…" she murmured again. "Call me a princess…fill it with dreams…"

Suddenly, the kitchen door was blown open, and with it the most glorious light ever to grace his eyes flooded in, a halo of purest white and deepest gold, dancing and swirling across his lowly prison, painting it with hues of heaven.

Outside the door, he caught a glimpse of many wondrous things, but mostly the spires of a palace on a mountain, and a flick of winged shoes running by. At the sight, tears blurred his eyes, but his mother seemed unaware of them. The light was wrapping around her, like gentle arms, pulling her in.

Luke cried again for her to save him, but as her face turned sharply towards him, there was a cruel beauty sketched into it.

"Silly boy," she cackled. "I don't need you anymore. Look at what I've got? Look at this! A palace on a mountain…Why do I need you?"  
And with a flash of cold, hard light, she vanished completely, leaving him to dwell in the dark, miserable, wretched quarters of his kitchen, caught like a spider's prey in a web, with Lucas—alive once more—plunging his knife downward through the shadowy air—

Which was when he woke up, gasping and sweating.

Presently, Thalia's grinning face blotted out the canopy of stars and night-sky stretching overhead.

"Dreaming again, sunshine?"

Luke groaned, rolling over on his side, attempting to harness and control the wild thing beating around in his chest like a crazed animal. Even through the shroud of dream-like panic, he wished his heart would stop falling into such fits: Thalia had to hear the erratic poundings it gave way to at night. How could she not? It must have been the loudest sound in the world.

But the girl only looked mildly concerned as her vivid gaze swept over him, pushing chunks of ragged hair off her brow in one swift motion. Slight worry somewhat faded the amusement on her face, but still the expression clung to her features.

"Did I wake you up from a really good one?" she questioned at length, her tone a bit more suspicious.

Luke let out a long breath and a laugh, sitting up, a feeling of guilt brushing over him at not answering right away. He didn't like to trouble her, even if she was good at making light of almost any situation.

"Yeah, a great one," he muttered sarcastically. "You and me were living on this huge cruise ship chock full of food and clothes and all that other stuff we're running low on. We had servants who did whatever we wanted and no monsters ever came after us."

Thalia snorted, throwing her head back in a gesture of hilarity.

"If it was so wonderful, how come you woke up horrified?"

"The boat sank," Luke answered promptly.

Thalia unleashed a torrent of laughter at this, loud and barking, and proceeded to stumble towards him on her knees, punching him in the shoulder.

"You're a dork, you know that?" she said warmly.

She lay down in the long grass of the meadow they were camping in, staring up at the moon, which peeped like a mischievous half-smile from behind a pocket of cloud. Luke smiled down at her, the visions of his nightmare receding into nothing as her voice fell over him, real and comforting.

It had been his lone stroke of fortune in the black, haphazard stream of _misfortune _that soaked his life—stumbling into this tough, bitingly sarcastic, secretly kind-hearted girl. Thalia was his first and only friend, and seemed able to soothe his nerves no matter how badly they were shattered.

"So, seriously," she finally spoke, after her breath had caught up with her. "What were you dreaming about? You looked freaked-out."

Luke sighed, casting a sullen gaze toward the remnants of their camp-fire, now merely a blackened pit full of dead embers.

After traveling with Thalia for about three weeks, he had grown closer to the girl than he had to anybody in his entire life—unless you counted his mother, but that relationship was stressed and disturbed, too one-sided, and could not be explained in such simple terms.

Thalia was the type of person he could talk easily with, let his guard fall slack around; when he was with her his face was all smiles and his voice full of laughter, his eyes light and pleasant. Nothing about her was feigned or pretend: she was a blunt person who said what she meant and had no issue with allowing herself to be heard. He trusted her for that. There was never any condescension in her gaze when she looked at him, never any slight sneer when he mentioned where he'd grown up, despite the chasm that gaped between their social ranks. He relinquished to her ideas and opinions he often kept silent, insecure how another might react to them, and sometimes even ventured to territory as delicate as _emotions, _which were phantom-things he normally kept hidden beneath a mask of inscrutability.

And yet, in the face of all this, he could not tell her what perhaps marked his identity more than anything else: the abusive cycle that existed at home, his suicidal mother, his demented stepfather. He wanted to tell her, even tried, but the words always stuck in his throat and he could not clamber over the mound of discomfort that reared before him at the challenge. Those things were too scarring, imbedded too deeply into his soul. They shied away from the light of conversation, pleasing themselves to prowl around his nightmares and haunt his sleeping hours instead.

Simply, he did not know how to talk about what had transpired—was not sure if he would _ever_ be able—and was afraid that, somehow, the information might pollute the wonder of this newfound friendship. Luke didn't want to connect the horrors of yesterday with the glamour of today, for doing so would mean admitting it had happened, and its memory would lurk, unbidden, beneath their friendly excursions. Talking about it would be reliving it, and he was determined to put the past behind him, instead of dwelling on it with permanent bitterness.

He wished he could relay that to Thalia, but no words seemed capable of saying it.

"You know," he said vaguely in response to her question. "About my mom and stuff."

Thalia got the hint immediately.

"Oh. So you think we should start packing up? The sun's beginning to rise."

She pointed over to the horizon, where a ribbon of blood-red was glowing against the sheet of midnight sky.

"You in a hurry to go somewhere?" Luke remarked, reclining back into a bed of soft grass. "Normally you don't even wake up until its mid-afternoon."

Thalia glared at him. "I do _not!_ Besides, it's kind of hard to fall asleep when you're thrashing around on the other side of the fireplace. Can't you ever just go to sleep like a good little boy?"

"Nah, not really," said Luke, a small smile creeping across his lips. "But that _is _pretty weird."

"What?" Thalia pushed herself up on her elbows, looking inquiringly at him from beneath glowering brows. "The fact that you can't lay still for a second?"

His grin widened. "No. The fact that you actually care enough to stay awake and _watch _me thrash around instead of sleeping."

She punched him again, only this time the motion seemed a little flustered and her face was more than a bit red.

"Don't flatter yourself," she scoffed. "Really, your looks made you so conceited."

By this point, Luke had becoming completely inured to Thalia's throw-about comments about his appearance; Luke hardly spared a glance at his reflection, but Thalia seemed to go through no pains in reminding him that he had a pleasant one. She almost always enjoyed finishing off a quip or tiny feud with some amused reference to it, probably because he was so baffled and awkward at the mentioning that she would double over in laughing fits. In fact, she would often trail out the joke so long that he was forced to snicker at it, however embarrassed and confused.

Now he simply ignored it, resigning to pack up.

"Well, I guess you're right about getting out of here. Hades seems determined to send hellhounds at us."

"Yeah," Thalia muttered, standing up. "You'd think he'd get a bit more creative and send something else at us. I'm almost getting bored—three weeks and only one type of monster!"

"Well, you're in luck," Luke said grimly as he rolled up the sleeping bags they bought with Thalia's credit card. ("It was an early birthday present! Honestly, Luke, stop looking at me like I'm a Fury in a wedding dress: _lots_ of kids get credit cards for their birthdays!") "They haven't sent _anything _at us in a while—my guess is that we're heading toward something really dangerous and they figure they'll just let us walk right into it."

Thalia grimaced. "You're such a pessimist."

Luke shrugged, straightening up and stamping out the few sparks of red that jumped from the predominantly dead fireplace.

"You don't think it's possible?"

"Oh yeah, it's _possible_," she grumbled. "It's just also pessimistic."

Luke grinned in response.

They shouldered their packs and walked onward, unaware of the soft hisses of laughter that followed them in their trek, and painfully oblivious to how right Luke's assumption had been.

--

They had been traveling for about an hour when the stranger found them.

After camping in an open field, they had moved out to discover themselves in the midst of long, sprawling country-land, laden with thickets of forest and rocky lanes cobbled between green plains. The whole area was devoid of any buildings, and the lack of population commenced an eerie silence that settled over everything like a fog. Normally, Luke relished the idea of solitude—one less pair of eyes to scrutinize him—but even he found the complete emptiness of the land disturbing. For miles all that was available was the tall, dark bodies of trees and swaying stalks of grass: he was certain they had stumbled in the wrong direction or accidentally slipped into some preserved Virginian land.

"Who's consulting the map?" Thalia would bristle at such comments. "I've gotten us this far, haven't I? We're almost to the border!"

Still, Luke could tell the utter desolation of this place unnerved even her firmly-rooted spirits. Her electric-blue eyes shifted back and forth swiftly and suspiciously across the grounds.

The stranger seemed to melt, unnoticed, from the shadows into their view. They had just passed a dense huddle of trees, and she literally skipped through the bramble towards them, laughing all the way.

"'Lo, lo, hello!" she chimed in a high-pitched, ecstatic voice. "What are you doing out here, all by yourself? You must be lost! Yes, very lost indeed! Why don't you come by the Lady's house? She will tell you which way to turn!"

It was Thalia who heard the cries first, pausing mid-stride and tugging on Luke's sleeve to halt him. She nodded back to the stranger.

The quickest, probably most childish thought to enter Luke's mind upon seeing her was _Little Red Riding Hood—_for she was a small girl, with rosy cheeks and round eyes, her face an innocent oval shrouded by a red hood. The crimson cape fell over her tiny frame the exact same way Luke imagined Riding Hood's would, and the dark curls tumbling from beneath the cloak completed the picture perfectly. She was talking in a flourish of hand gestures, her eyes radiant and her mouth a blur:

"Yes, the Lady will certainly know what to do with you! Nothing is ever boring with her—she makes sure nothing is as it seems. Come; come have tea with the Lady!"

The stranger gibbered excitedly, and on any other occasion Luke would have steered clear from such uncannily high spirits—there was something odd about this everlastingly cheery girl, so like a picture in a storybook, inviting two raggedy-looking children she didn't know into her "Lady's" home.

_And who is this Lady? _His thoughts muttered skeptically. _Who in Virginia goes by the title of "Lady" anymore?_

But something about the girl's eyes entranced him: they were like smooth, motionless pools of water, crystal-clear and very settling. A pleasant haze spread across his mind as his gaze found hers, and any of his recent doubts were banished. Was he so jaded that even an endearing little girl posed as a threat? Besides, this Lady sounded quite interesting, quite fascinating; nothing was ever dull with her, and how he hated to be dull.

It was only then that he realized how monotone his life had been till now—a predictable string of events, boring details of alcoholism, abuse, suicide, escapes from a poverty-stricken home…how very trivial, how….

_What am I talking about? There's nothing trivial about those things—their very bad, serious things. And I'm not dull, I'm a half-blood, and –_

A half-blood! The haze that this giggling girl's gaze intoxicated him with clamored at the word. Half-blood! Demigod! It was a glint of interest, of capricious potential, in his suddenly boring, humdrum existence. Exciting things happened to gods, after all, and they made their children do exciting things too. Perhaps this Lady could make him interesting, and then he could bear the mantel of half-blood proudly. Perhaps she could dab some color to his grayed-out portrait.

Expected, expected. Everything so far seemed tiredly _expected, _except for this Lady—

_No, _Luke mentally shook himself. _You're acting crazy. You and Thalia have to get to Half-Blood Hill, and we'll never do it if…._

Half-Blood Hill. What an ordinary place for demigods who wished to be ordinary. Even the name was boring, hackneyed—_Half-Blood Hill, _a haven for _half-bloods…_

_It's not boring, it's safe, _he struggled to think. _We need to get there soon. And this little girl seems weird—why would she talk to complete strangers? And the things she's talking about…not normal…_

But she was just friendly. Just a friendly, warm-hearted little girl who said interesting things. Normal wasn't interesting, so why should she talk of normal things? And she just wanted to help them, after all. What was wrong with that? Nothing. And the Lady. The Lady the girl spoke about was _interesting…_

_Well, we _are_ lost, _Luke finally relented, _and this Lady seems capable of giving us directions. We need to reach Half-Blood Hill as soon as possible._

He never noticed how glazed Thalia's eyes were as they turned to him, but then she never remarked how equally fogged his own were.

"She'll give us directions out of here," he said numbly to her.

"And maybe she'll give us some supplies," Thalia answered.

"Yes!" the girl chuckled and clapped. "The Lady will make things fun and extraordinary. She always does. Come with me—to the Lady!"

The child nestled herself between them and grabbed a hand on either side, marching brightly back into the wood as they passed. She kept skipping and laughing as she jostled them forward, between slender shoots of trees, tangles of weeds, and low-hanging branches.

"Almost there," she kept saying, and Luke's heart beat excitedly at the announcement. Finally, something colorful and enthralling would take place! How dull were hellhounds and Hades and other monsters!

And then they stopped at an edifice so twisted and warped it almost startled Luke out of his haze.

It was a lopsided, weirdly-constructed building, with a foundation much too small and brittle to support its cumbersome top—yet somehow it did. The lower levels of the house were made completely of stained glass, shimmering in dark shades of red and blue and green; it looked very much as if the shards had been balanced against one another, with no panes to hold them in place, but never did the delicate walls teeter, even in gusts of wind.

The house spanned out wide as it jutted upward—a haphazard array of blackened spires, red-brick chimneys, stone gargoyles and ornate terraces. Each piece of construction was thrown in randomly, so that no real order seemed to exist. On one end of the roof—(which in some places had tiles, in other places wood, and in some spots complete gaps)—a chipped birdbath stood perfectly still on a slant. A cone-shaped structure stuck out awkwardly at the side of the building, a dim, triangular window set into its steel surface.

The front door, however, looked entirely ordinary. Just a charming, unpainted slab of oak with a brass knocker and a doorknob: a little sign dangled over its face, the strings suspending it nailed into the wood.

In spidery, opulent words, the sign read: _Welcome to the House of Chaos._

Too bad dyslexia made it impossible for either demigod to decipher that meaning—and too bad the Lady who resided within it knew exactly that, therefore made certain it was in English, rather than the ancient Greek symbols so much easier for them to comprehend.

"Uh…what does that say?" Luke asked confusedly, gazing up at the sign.

The little girl giggled. "It says welcome!" she chimed.

"What's your name?" Thalia suddenly shot at her. "Who are you? Why are you taking us here?"

For a moment, a dark shadow seemed to pass over the girl's sweet face, so that the calm pools of her eyes began to stir like wild oceans. Then her features lightened, and the innocence that painted them returned.

"I was Orianna," she explained cheerily. "But that is not important. I have not been Orianna for many years—she was very boring, and you would not have liked her. Now I don't need a name. The Lady fixed me. Come! She will fix you too—"

"But what do they call you?" Luke questioned. "It makes no sense for you to have no name, how does someone refer to you?"

The girl's face went blank and rigid.

"Sense is boring. We do not have sense here."

Luke blinked. He stared up at the confused, jumbled monstrosity that towered before them. A breath of wind suddenly blew through the trees, making the whole thing seesaw dangerously on its fragile bottom, though a moment ago the most powerful breeze could not budge it.

"You know, I think we can find our own way," he said slowly. "Right, Thalia? I don't think this is necessary…"

"Yeah," Thalia agreed instantly. "I've got a map. We're doing fine by ourselves."

"Just tell your Lady thanks anyway," Luke finished.

But as these words the front door swung open, quickly and easily, though its hinges creaked as if they had not been oiled for many years; a cool, pleasant voice drifted through the doorway, slithering into their ears and winding about their brains.

_"Nonsense. You must come visit me. You must come in, little godlings…"_

And with a shock that paralyzed his whole body, Luke fell limp and tumbled to the ground.

--

When Luke woke up, he was in a dungeon-ballroom.

There were no other words to describe the place: gleaming, marble floors stretched out before him, coated in long strips of velvet carpet. A dazzling chandelier of crystals and candles hung in the middle of a domed ceiling; men and women in luxurious outfits danced by gracefully.

But despite the perfect scenery, certain aspects of the room and its inhabitants made it demented, abnormal. In its very center sat an old, ugly scaffold, and on that stood a guillotine—its wide blade curved and gleaming, flecked with red spots and scores of rust. Tarnished chains hung from the walls—corroded iron meeting sparkling marble— fettering some of the fancily-garbed people in dreadful positions while others danced. Plenty other unfortunates were crowded in small, dingy cells set all about the room.

Even the ones that were dancing, Luke soon noticed, were not entirely free. Women covered shackles with the ruffles of their dresses, and men dragged iron balls on links that clung to their ankles.

Luke shook his head, bewildered and horrified. The rational part of his brain kept telling himself that he was dreaming, but the frightened part screamed that he was also a prisoner, trapped in a cell like these unnerving shadow-people.

He turned swiftly and found Thalia at his side, still unconsciousness. He shook her worriedly, anxious for her to wake.

"Thalia—come on!—we're in serious trouble!"

Blue eyes fluttered open, then widened in shock.

"_Luke? _What—what are you _wearing?"_

Luke looked down at himself, startled. Instead of his worn jeans and tattered shirt, he was dressed in a plush red vest with an ink-black jacket thrown over it. He wore polished shoes rather than scuffed sneakers, and a crumpled white flower had been tucked into his lapel.

It was a replica of what the men outside were wearing, vacant and grim, as they twirled women around the guillotine.

"I don't know," he said hastily. "But it doesn't matter. We're in a hell of a situation; we're trapped inside a cell—"

Thalia suddenly gasped, gazing up at him.

"That freaky girl! She put a spell on us and brought us to that weird house—we must be inside it now!"

She stood up abruptly, breathing heavily…and almost screamed when her eyes fell down upon her own garments.

Luke shot her a baffled glare, but a moment she stepped into his line of vision, and he understood. He had no idea how he could not have noticed it before, but then perhaps that shadows had hidden it from his eyes—or perhaps the apparel had just shimmered over her ordinary clothes while he was blinking. Anything seemed possible.

A flowery, white-lace gown clung tight to Thalia's frame, flooding in a wide sweep to her feet. Bejeweled bangles clattered on her wrists and a circlet of silver pressed against her dark tresses, which suddenly fell in a loose cloud around her face. The sleeves of the dress draped elegantly off her shoulders in that same, lazy fashion a princess's would.

Thalia was not very happy.

"WHAT am I wearing? Gods, HOW is this happening? Where are we? How'd we even get in here?"

She rattled frantically on the bars of their cell, then took to pacing around the cramped interior, groping at her hair and the crown, but it could not be moved off her head.

"We brought our bags with us when that creepy kid led us here. Someone must have taken them. We were tricked, of course—but who tricked us? Why would they lock us in here in weird clothes? Nothing makes _sense."_

"Exactly."

Both demigods whipped their heads towards the source of the noise, but no figure revealed itself: only the disembodied laughter of someone who sounded quite amused and rather insane.

"Nothing is supposed to make sense, my dear," the voice continued. "Sense is such a _boring _thing—but then, I guess your father wouldn't agree with that. Oh well! He broke his oath, and that was a pretty senseless thing to do, if I do say so myself. Senseless, but oh so interesting. You see? How dull your life would have been if your father was sensible—you wouldn't have had a life at all!"

A cascade of giggles broke out then, reverberating off the cold stone walls of their cell, colliding against their eardrums in an eerie, sickening ring.

The duo instinctively huddled closer, as if hoping to band together against a common enemy, even though they were both unarmed and clueless: the laughter continued to bounce around their cage, in a high, chilling cadence, when there was an audible _pop, _and two eyes appeared out of the darkness.

They were startlingly beautiful, although mismatched. One was a deep, rich, red-tinted brown, while the other shone a sharp green.

Luke's throat was dry. He thought his head might explode from all the jumbled, frantic thoughts racing across it. Eyes with no body? What was next?

But Thalia had stepped up to them, quite white in the face, but her expression also quite firm.

"Are you our captor? Why have you brought us here? Who are you? Show yourself!"

She stamped her foot heatedly against the floor.

The eyes rolled. "So brave and noble, just like your father—_booorrrriiiing!_ But what about the trickster? His father _never _stops talking."

The vivid, different-colored eyes found Luke's face, and a pair of smiling red lips soared through the shadows, followed by a nose, then ears, then a fountain of straight, black hair. A sudden whirlwind took to the cell's stale air; a sound like the flapping of a dozen bird wings was heard, and in the midst of it a woman appeared, tall and slender, clad in a very modern-looking red dress with high leather boots.

The dress would have been completely normal if it hadn't been for the weird, misshapen symbols writhing across it.

"Do you know who I am?" she said crisply to Luke, her odd eyes pinned to his face.

His mouth was dry, but he opened it and his voice scraped against his throat, giving the answer. He was unsure how he knew it, but he knew it with powerful certainty.

"Eris. Goddess of Chaos."

Eris threw her head back in a torrent of vicious laughter.

"Oh, so you're quiet _and _intelligent! I'm beginning to think your Daddy lied to me—you're nothing like him, after all. An improvement, in my opinion, but then—" she was silent for a moment, her long finger tapping against her chin. "Do you see the dancing?" she suddenly inquired, abandoning all former conversation. "All my little toys are out there, in shackles and chains. I suppose you didn't expect _that! _No, nothing is ordinary around in my House." Her eyes glinted darkly. "Maybe I'll let you see the rest of it after I've finished playing with you."

"Eris—uh, ma'am," Luke fumbled hastily. "We…um, Thalia and I are kind of in a rush, we've sort of—uh—got to get to Camp Half-Blood…so…."

The goddess looked highly affronted. "Camp Half-Blood? Bah! My children aren't even allowed to go to that rinky-dink gathering of shacks—not that they _want _to go, that is! It's so boring and ordinary. Learn to fight, blah, blah, blah. Stay safe from monsters, blah, blah, blah. Alright, so most of my children are in mental institutions instead, but that's only because they see the world differently, _better,_ actually…"

She trailed off, seemingly uninterested, then resurfaced with a wild grin plastered over her red lips.

"Wouldn't lightening be _so _much better if it was green?" she said excitedly. "And wouldn't it be brilliant if, when it struck the earth, a tidal wave came instead of fire? And if rain was little spits of flame instead of water? Oh, I've been inspired!"

She spun in a fast, perfect circle, her laugh tinkling through the air like the clatter of a million silver bells. When she turned back to them, her eyes seeking their faces, an odd sensation bombarded Luke.

A sudden recklessness, an urge to do something different and interesting; he was drowned in a boredom that was near close to insanity, a lack of interest so strong it smothered him like a thick woolen blanket. His blood sped rapidly through his veins and his heart pounded in a wild, random rhythm. Everything was so dull, so ordinary, so expected. His fingers twitched in anticipation. He needed excitement. He needed—

_Chaos…_

"We want to play," Thalia was saying wildly. "We want chaos. Please, Eris, we're so bored—"

Mismatched orbs glittered. "I hoped you would say that. Why don't you go dancing with my other toys? Just be careful," The green eye winked. "I plan to make it rain—you know, interesting rain, not the wet kind. And indoors. Wouldn't rain be so much better indoors? Oh, and first you better get through _these."_

She held up her slender hand and snapped her fingers, swift and precise. The black bars of their cell began to twist and writhe, struggling against the dirty cell-floor and ceiling; suddenly they broke off completely, hissing and sputtering, the top swelling into the shape of a head, protruding snout, and bulging eyes. The bottom half shrunk until it formed the point of a tail, thick and flexible.

The bars had turned into snakes.

"Have fun," Eris crooned. And with a flash she disappeared.

Both Luke and Thalia backed up against the wall of the cell, staring horrified at the writhing mass of snakes. There had to be at least fifteen, and they were all solid, long, terribly powerful-looking things, snapping jaws full of jagged, venomous fangs.

"You _had _to ask the Goddess of Chaos to play, huh?" Luke muttered frantically as they pressed themselves as far away from the creatures as possible.

"It was Eris's aura!" Thalia exclaimed. "It's chaotic—just like her. So it makes people around her feel chaotic."

Luke gritted his teeth. "So, she just wants to watch us die in her screwed-up funhouse? We have no weapons, and I don't even _want_ to know what 'interesting' rain is to her—"

At that moment a snake struck, and Thalia kicked it away anxiously from his ankle with a rough jive of her foot.

"Thanks," Luke barely had time so say before stamping on the head of another. The thing crumpled the moment his heel connected with it—and Luke was surprised to feel it reshaping beneath his shoe, flattening and hardening. He spared a rapid glance downward and found that he was now standing on a _sword _rather than the corpse of a serpent.

"Thalia! The snakes become weapons if you kill them—"

"So pick it up!" she shrieked while batting away three snakes with another kick. Despite the situation, Luke couldn't help but admire her skills: even when forced into a fancy gown and high-heel shoes, Thalia's reflexes were still amazing, her movements fluid and dangerous.

He jabbed at another snake with his heel, then bent down swiftly to retrieve the sword. Once again, as soon as his fingers groped the hilt, he felt a rush of confidence and ease. The sword became an extension of his arm, swinging and cutting and swooping with all the grace he blundered through his life lacking.

Everything always felt so _certain_ when he held a blade. Although Luke hadn't taken any formal lessons, he had been practicing with the weapon ever since he stumbled into Thalia, and progressing steadily. It was the only thing that ever came natural to him.

Besides him, Thalia had managed to kill two of the things, and was now sporting a thin, pointed spear.

"Once we get out into the ballroom," she was shouting over the din. "Something bad is going to happen—Eris won't make this easy—"

"No kidding," Luke retorted with a roll of his eyes. "The dancers will probably pull machines guns out of their coats and blow our brains out. Can't you pray to your dad? Maybe he can give us directions out of this place!"

Thalia bristled, poking her spear through the head of a striking serpent.

"You _know _he never listens—try yours!"

"I don't even know who he is!"

"It doesn't matter, just try!"

It would have been impossible for Luke to shut his eyes as an onslaught of hissing, sputtering, spitting creatures wound about his ankles, but nevertheless he pursed his lips in what he hoped was prayer-like reverence and attempted to speak to something he never before thought existed—a Greek god.

A shadowy, unclear image of the being began to form in his mind, as he slashed through a particularly fat serpent; there were no features, no mark of countenance, but the body was undoubtedly manlike, though taller and radiating with a power devoid in all humankind. A frown bent Luke's lips.

He knew that even the slightest inclination of a person like this should fill him with awe, but instead he only tasted an unwelcome bitterness in his mouth. Someone above humanity—all-knowing and omnipotent—and his mother just lying in a huddle, splotches on her dress that would dry to rust-colors—

_Uh…hey, Dad, _he struggled as he dampened his resentment. _Hope you don't think I'm being presumptuous, asking for help when I don't even know your name, but we're kind of in a jam, and, uh….a little luck wouldn't be bad, ya know? _

If anyone godlike parent heard his prayer, he was completely unresponsive. No spark of light or shock of revelation brightened their grave, warped scenario, and the next snake to lunge at him had hard, hungry eyes.

Luke plunged his blade through its neck, stepping a little further into the open, while its guts sprayed in a clatter of tin cans and old wrappers. (Now that both demigods were armed, Eris seemed content on the creatures bursting into junk of any shape and form.) Besides him Thalia was shrieking as a brown, fetid ooze splattered from a snake's ruptured body.

The two stood panting, sweating and hacking their way through the jungle of black snakes, remains of the creatures scattering around their feet in a scene of utmost paraphernalia—finally Thalia plunged through the opening, and Luke followed with a swift cut of his sword.

Now out of the dirty cell, brightly-garbed couples danced across the floor like flowers floating across a sparkling pond. Though all were as beautiful as carved dolls, the expressions riddled into their faces were severe and worrying; they held each other rigidly and danced with a somber slowness, no sound other than the scrape of metal balls on the floor and clanking manacles on their wrists.

Thalia let out a little breath, the spear poking out in front of her.

"Let's go," she murmured, her eyes sliding ever-slightly to the guillotine, which offered its bloody, rust-pocked grin.

Luke gripped his sword and took a step forward.

All at once, the ballroom darkened, and a terrifying flash lit up the high, domed ceiling; a streak of purest-emerald cracked through a beam like electricity, so that the broken wood fell, slanting, dripping wet rather than sizzling.

"What was it Eris said?" Luke asked nervously as the couples twirled, quite comfortably, around them. "Something about lightening that makes tidal waves and rain made out of fire?"

Thalia paled but held her spear erect.

"Something like that," she answered as shadows gathered around them, and a single spit of flame tumbled from the paneling high above. It landed on the chestnut curls of a woman, whispering softly; but rather than pat it out, the woman just gave a little shake, and some light seemed to come to her emotionless eyes.

"Hmm," she sighed in a voice that carried throughout the entire chamber. "What a long time I've been sleeping. Now that I'm up, I must search for the Princess. She needs to be crowned, after all."

Luke didn't like the sound of that.

"There's a doorway over there, let's take it," he hissed in Thalia's ear, fingers closing around her wrist. He had a creeping feeling that he knew who the princess was, and an even more unpleasant hunch that he knew what _crowning _meant.

"You don't need to _hold _me—" Thalia snarled, but at that moment there was another horrible snap of electricity, swift, bright, and flashing; so fast it left a ghost of green spots to dance before their eyes. A huge wave of water swept over the dance-floor, upturning at least a dozen men and woman, all who brushed dripping hair out of their eyes and murmured something that sounded distinctly like "princess" and "crowning."

Luke tightened his grip firmer on Thalia's wrist and wheeled his way through the mass of vacant, twirling couples.

If the skies could rip open indoors, that was what was happening now—there was an awful ridge in the ceiling above, the darkness bunkered on either side, and thousands of sullen red embers poured forth from it, in a hot, glittering sheet that fell sideways through the ballroom, dousing the marionette-people in flames that stirred them from their trance.

Somehow, the fire-drops kept conveniently missing their own bodies, but Luke was aware, with oddly remorseful clarity, that burning was the least of their worries where Eris was involved; it was too ordinary a death, after all. She needed things _chaotic, _and what could be more chaotic than having a herd of Victorian dancers maul them for—

"Look, the Princess! I've found the Princess!"

There was a scream and a flurry of pinkish skirts, while a man in a smart tweed jacket disentangled himself from his partner and whirled around, clamping his hand on Thalia's shoulder.

Luke's fears were confirmed.

"Thalia—Eris made _you _the princess because you hate them; you have to get away, I'll hold them off—"

There was a flash of metal and Luke drove his blade down at the man's arm, which, as he expected, exploded upon contact in a cloud of powder—these finely-dressed couples were not real people at all, but mindless dolls that followed the capricious whims of the Goddess of Chaos.

The limp arm of the puppet hung resolutely on Thalia's shoulder, and she shook it off in a jerky, shivering motion.

"Are you kidding?" she finally answered as they fought their way through the crowd; it seemed the slightest flame or drop of water brought new purpose to the drones. "I'm not going to just leave you here! Who do you think I am?"

"I was hoping you were _intelligent, _they won't come after me; they're too concerned with you—"

"Right now, but you know how quickly Eris gets bored!"

But the argument could go no further: they were inching steadfastly towards the large, ornate doorway that sat on the other end of the room, and with each falling of blade or spear, the things garbed in human clothes burst into dust. Progress was slow, tiresome, and agonizing, but Luke thought that with keen concentration and perseverance, perhaps they would make it.

Of course, Eris could not have her playthings finish so easily.

Another crack of green lightening ensued, splashing both demigods and puppets in a huge lurch of water, knocking them cleanly off their feet and forcing liquid down their throats. The blade slipped through Luke's fingers as he emerged, gasping and sputtering, his blonde hair flopping before his streaming, wild eyes. The fine garments he wore now clung to his body, drenched and icy against his skin; his throat burned from the fluid that gushed down it, as if parched rather than quenched.

_Nothing makes any damn sense, I'm sick of this nonsense—_

His eyes were blurred and tearing, so that he could not see, and the world commenced to haze and whirl around him in a cacophony of prying fingers, painted faces, emerald flashes and tiny dots of flame. Then there was an outraged cry, and Luke's eyes adjusted enough to see two hard-faced women dragging Thalia, quite stubbornly, towards the center of the room. Her spear lay three feet from her.

Luke's eyes lifted with horror to the spot they were yanking the bestrewn, sopping, waterlogged girl: his heart fell in cold terror. It was as he expected.

The blade of the guillotine was beginning to swing like a slow, graceful pendulum, its wide, severe grin blurring with the motion, first moving tiredly, than obtaining speed as it swayed, swift, swifter; it became a smear of silver, blood-red, and brown-rust.

Luke charged, grappling for his sword, but a throng of the hatefully somber, white-cheeked marionettes crashed upon him, enchaining him with arms that should have broke as easily as porcelain, but held as firmly as iron. He screamed out, thrashed, kicked, even _bit—_but the gloved hands, like feathers on his skin, kept him rooted to the spot, even as the dead lips of a puppet met his ears, whispered into them—

"Prince cannot save the Princess: no, not in _this _fairytale. In this fairytale, the Princess must be crowned, the Princess must be crowned…"

"THALIA!"

His heart had exploded, his every nerve was strained and shattered, his brain had ceased to function, frozen in a numb horror. He could not see this, could not hear it, could not understand or even fathom bearing it. The dread crept into his body like a cold trickle, poisoning it, tarnishing his soul with stains that no amount of time could wash out. If it happened, if he was forced to watch, as even now his eyes stood transfixed and opened—

_Oh, please, Zeus, if you really are Thalia's father don't let this happen to her. Don't let it come true—please—please—she doesn't deserve it! Would you truly allow Eris to cut off your own child's head in some sort of warped ceremony? Please, save her—save her—I'm too weak, but I'll keep trying and I'll do anything—_

There was chanting now, low and mysterious, rising like a dark cloud from the very depths of the Underworld. It was a haunting, unholy, unwholesome mixture of notes that drove into his heart like a stake.

_I'll do anything; I'll suffer, I'll die—_

He heard murmurings all around him, soft whisperings, Thalia's screams loud as she moved, but they would not turn her loose, no matter how skilled her assaults; they were immune unless she had a weapon, and her spear lay abandoned on the marble. He could not reach it for her, could not throw her the sword that had slipped from his grasp.

_Anything, please, anything…_

"The Princess will be crowned. The Princess will be crowned, as the Lady does command it."

_ANYTHING, ANYTHING—_

There were tears in his eyes, and blood in his mouth from biting down so hard on his lip before screaming. It tasted metallic, sultry: like true bitterness dripping down his throat. The spits of fire had stopped falling, the emerald lightening had ceased, all dance was finished and the Goddess of Chaos's dolls stood, watching, while he attempted to tear himself from them to save her.

Suddenly, an odd shadow overcame Thalia's face, and her fingertips sparked. Her screams died in her throat as she drew a ragged gasp, then proceeded to clench her white fists tightly.

A surge of brilliant, crackling, _natural blue _lightening surged from her palms, arcing in powerful streams and obliterating her captors on either side. They disintegrated in wisps of white powder, beautiful gowns falling in a heap of autumn-colored fabric: they sizzled loudly in the damning silence that slammed down on the ballroom.

The fingers slackened their hold, the chatter of the puppets ceased; Luke ripped himself free of them and stumbled forward, stooping to grab his sword as he ran, Thalia still examining the daggers of light that lanced up and down her fingertips. She touched the nearest doll and it broke instantly, in a cloud of dusty plaster.

"THALIA!" He did not notice the tears in his eyes.

"Luke, its okay, look at this!"

She displayed her ten fingers to him with wild fascination, each digit laced together with fine threads of lightening; the hue matched her eyes exactly.

"I know, I know!" Luke shouted back, still weeping despite himself, his heart fluttering in a nervous, half-relieved, half-tormented beat. Had it been any other moment, he would have wiped the tears quickly and been ashamed of himself for shedding them, but now he did not even know they flowed. "Let's just get _out _of here—please!"

All Thalia's shock and fear seemed to have drained out of her with the discovery of this new power, but at the desperate urgency in his voice, and a slight glance to his face, she resumed a serious countenance and fought her way towards him. The marionettes fell silently and easily at her touch, almost as if she were the Angel of Death, catching their lives with a single drag of her finger.

They tore through the remaining puppets quite easily now, who, rather than clamoring angrily over losing the jewel of their precious ceremony, endeavored to becoming gloomy and lifeless once more, though Luke did not know why: some even fell back into their grim embrace and began to dance once again.

They reached the doorway; Luke clutched Thalia's wrist very tightly as they ran through it, into an odd, zigzagging hallway that seemed to yawn on forever, and with portions so awkward it almost hurt to look at. Some lopsided portraits hung on weird walls crawling with ivy, displaying men with no faces and cross-eyed women with no hair.

"Anything could be a trap," Thalia muttered as they slowed their pace, glancing around.

Luke could only nod. His heart was still thrumming erratically from how close he had come to losing the best friend he ever had, the _only _friend he ever had, and definitely the most important—what would he have done if he lost her? If he had found her withered and broken the way he found his mother, the only other significant feature in his life? Would he have faded from existence also? He thought it very possible: he had already lost one attachment, he could _not _lose another. He resolved to be stronger—to make certain it never happened again.

He clutched the blade firmer as Thalia yanked her arm out of his grip.

"Honestly, Luke! I don't need you holding my hand for everything!"

He glanced to her, bewildered, and she looked a bit flustered by her own words. Somehow, the expression made a shadow of his former composure pass once more across his face.

"It was your _wrist, _not your hand," he grumbled, wiping a line of sweat off his brow. "And I just wanted to make sure none of Eris's weird puppet-people got at you again."

"I can take care of myself," she replied stiffly, turning a blue eye upon him. "_Obviously."_

As if only just realizing it, Luke jerked a hand to his cheek and hastened to wipe away the remaining moisture from his eyes, suddenly mortified, pretending he was rubbing an itch from tired, bloodshot orbs. A hollow, digging embarrassment burrowed into his heart; he wondered how pathetic he must appear to her.

But Thalia was giving him an odd, pale sort of smile.

"Luke, its okay; really."

He just nodded absently, refusing to meet her eye. "Isn't Eris going to be mad that we escaped her screwed-up ballroom? Don't you think she'll come after us or send us something else?"

Thalia shrugged. "Probably, but who knows with her? She's _chaotic, _remember? Her moods and opinions swing so quickly that she forgets what she's talking about mid-sentence and moves onto something else. Maybe at first she wanted us to die, but by now she's probably changed her mind. Besides, isn't it more _interesting _that we got away?" She sighed and clenched her fists with reviving vigor. "I didn't even know I could _do _that—make lightening, I mean. What a time to discover a new ability, huh?"

She said it lightly and fondly, but Luke was serious when he answered.

"I prayed to your father when they caught me. I prayed—I prayed that he wouldn't let you die. I said I'd do anything, even die. I mean that, Thalia."

Thalia stopped moving altogether, turning towards him with a pensiveness that lit her eyes so gradually it was like a dim light growing faintly in illumination; a veil of lightheartedness falling slack off her face, revealing the true soul beneath. He thought he could see it fluttering away, sliding slowly: her jewel-eyes searched his face, and to anyone else the sight might have seemed ridiculous, with her in tattered princess garb and he dressed like a drenched prince, but to them the world had halted, and something unknown passed between them.

"Really?" she said at length, quietly.

He only nodded, she smiled, and the spell was broken: both laughed awkwardly and turned away from each other for a moment, examining the strangeness of this abode the Goddess of Chaos had constructed for herself.

They passed many chambers: some were filled with broken furniture, others completely upside down, with seats glued to the high, vaulted ceiling, and others that were in a state of such havoc that they would have been impossible to clean, with food and clothes and piled debris strewn over stained, knotted rugs. More than once, an eye blinked out of the wood, following them down their passage, at which Thalia stuck her tongue out at and hissed "mind your own business!"

They walked by one door that was slightly ajar, with a queer bluish light streaming through it in thin, slender rays. Thalia was instantly fascinated by it, especially because the rusted lock that hung on the doorknob gaped open, and she wondered fervently what had broken it.

"What do you think is in there?" she asked.

"I don't know," Luke responded immediately. "It doesn't matter; we got to get out of here."

But she ignored him, as she normally did when her interests were involved, and drew the door a little wider open.

It was a cramped closet filled with water, dark and deep and midnight-blue, which did not spill even a drop as the door swung on its hinges; a rather large octopus sat, suspended in the liquid, with its fat tentacles tangled and bulbous eyes sullen. It reached one, slippery, ink-stained arm out of the water towards Thalia, at which Luke raised his sword, and it withdrew the limb just as quickly, closing the door along with it.

"I told you not to open it," Luke remarked after a full silence of ten minutes.

"Yeah," muttered Thalia, who still looked quite bewildered and a bit disgusted. "You did."

They marched along the hallway without opening anymore doors.

"Ah," whispered a smooth, velvety voice after some time. "Silly godlings, silly playthings of mine: how do you expect to get out of my House without calling upon me?"

In a gaudy, rapid flutter of what seemed like multicolored bird-wings, Eris emerged before them, still swathed in her low-cut dress with the misshapen symbols twisting across red fabric; her high boots clicked with a loud and powerful sound against the wooden floor.

All at once, Luke wanted to scream at her, wanted to roar and rage and condemn her for the pain she so easily put them through, just for her own flyaway amusement: but the hot, angry sentiment leaked out of him just as fast as it leaped up, like an initial flame doused in water; besides an omnipotent goddess _all _feelings of resentment was forced to quell.

All at once, his nerves became jumpy once more, and that same edge of restlessness possessed him, urging him to try something dangerous, insane, _chaotic..._

He forced his thoughts to stay lucid as Eris's aura continued to antagonize him, fixing his thoughts on the goal—_getting out—_rather than straying to the whims a bewitching goddess.

"You did not answer my question!" Eris simpered with a toss of her pin-straight locks. "How do you plan on escaping the House of Chaos without assistance from the Goddess of Chaos herself?"

Thalia opened her mouth, but Luke answered first—

"We don't: tell us the way out."

As swift and sudden as rain-clouds gathering over a cerulean sky, her brows bent in a severe frown.

"Do you _demand _something of a goddess?"

Luke was unsure whether he imagined it or not, but Eris seemed to grow a few feet taller as her voice rose, towering like a carved, painted statue.

"No," he answered right away. "We're asking, pleading. We're too dull for your house anyway—we might ruin all your lovely chaos."

He felt Thalia's gaze incredulous upon him, but Eris's own countenance lightened and took on a fair, breezy air.

"Yes, you would be rather lost without me—and old playthings _do _bore me, after all. There are only so many games you can play, and now that you've finished this one, I might as well throw you out."

Luke tensed somewhat at this: those were not the exact words he was looking for. But Eris caught hold of his troubles and laughed at his worried brow.

"Oh—I won't kill you!" Her mismatched eyes slid discreetly to Thalia. "Perhaps, I would _like _to, but the Princess's daddy absolutely forbids it, and although war can be fun, I'm rather not in the mood to get him in a huff. Besides, after the Crowning Ceremony, I've deduced that you two are not suited for my House, as other children are."

A thought occurred to Luke, jolting and forceful.

"That—that girl!" he gasped. "What was her name…Orianna, or something? The one that brought us here—you tricked her into coming to your house, the same way you brought us. She's your prisoner!"

Thalia shot him a glare as his furious words, but the goddess did not seem in the slightest deterred by his accusations.

"Perhaps," she yawned idly, white fingers running through her curtain of black hair. "But Orianna was never meant for life at home, where she was smothered and shackled by dull, ordinary existence. As my most recent daughter, she has devoted her life to me, and makes an interesting decoration to my abode."

Thalia and Luke exchanged glances; it now seemed sensible that the little girl could bewitch them with the same haze that Eris's own aura intoxicated them with, and that she appeared so erratic and unstable. The daughter of the Goddess of Chaos, herself—she probably considered herself fortunate, special, _unique, _at being offered the opportunity to lay her life at her mother's feet, and exist in sole and constant servitude to the goddess.

A sick, crawling feeling knotted Luke's stomach.

_Tools,_ he thought savagely. _That's all we'll ever be to them—tools. _

"Will you help us out?" Thalia was saying, her face composed in a mask of inscrutability. He was certain she was harrowed by his sullen expression, thinking it would offend Eris, and sought to relax his features, but it seemed almost impossible.

_Your own father didn't even answer you, _a voice hissed in the back of his mind, even while Thalia and Eris conversed. _You prayed and he never listened…_

"This conversation is tedious and tiresome," Eris suddenly moaned, cutting through his dark reveries. "I will let you go, only because I am bored of it," But her vivid, mingled gaze then fell on Luke, pinning him with the gravity of her stare: he saw a lot of things in those eyes: fires raging in the red-tinted brown, tornadoes in the wild, bright green. "But certain people should be careful, for though their lives many be anything but dull, they might find themselves mired in tragedy, and become quite…disagreeable, even to me."

He did not know how to respond to such a comment, though it sounded like a threat. Numbly, he offered her the sword.

Eris's eyes glinted. "No. Keep it."

And with a snap of her perfect fingers, a chasm gaped at their feet, and they fell through it, into the descending shadows.

---

At first, Luke assumed the Goddess of Chaos had decided to change her eternally-changing mind and dropped them into another demented, deathly obstacle for her own cruel enjoyment. But slowly, cautiously, his eyelids crawled upward and revealed to him the sight of green, star-shaped leaves, canopied over him with the great limbs of oaks.

He sat up immediately, rubbing his temples, and acknowledged that he was once again in normal attire—his worn, tattered T-shirt and the faded jeans that frayed at the ends, along with sneakers so overly used his toes were sinking into the literal soles of them. Besides him, Thalia began to stir, also clad in her purposely-torn pants and angry, punk-style shirt; all jewelry had promptly vanished and her hair was once more pulled into bristly spikes.

"Ugh," she groaned, looking about her with bleary eyes. "Couldn't Eris have shown us the front door? What is _wrong _with that goddess?"

A smile quirked Luke's lips, despite himself.

"Gee, I don't know, Thalia," he answered sarcastically. "Why don't you go ask the Goddess of _Chaos _what's wrong with her?"

It wasn't really that funny, but something about it made Thalia snicker, and the effect was contagious: soon Luke was chuckling to himself, then outright laughing, and after about five minutes the both had elapsed into fits of humor so great that tears sprang to their eyes. The two attempted to wheeze comments between gasps, but nothing said was intelligible, and it wasn't really necessary anyway.

They were hungry, tired, and shot from their encounter with an all-powerful goddess—but they had also fought, escaped, and returned to the safeguard of sanity, when they could have so easily been lost in the midst of chaos forever.

It was something to laugh about.

"Your lip is bleeding," Thalia said finally, wiping her eyes.

Luke stroked a finger across his lower lip and found a line of blood followed it.

"Yeah," he said vaguely. "I guess I bit down on it too hard back in the ballroom."

Thalia looked at him quizzically. "When did that happen?"

With the memory came a shadow, and the smile died from his expression.

"When I thought I lost you."

Thalia turned away from him, fiddling uncomfortably with the threads of her torn jeans; a silence fell around them, heavy and full of meaning, so that it became a trial even to glance at the other straight in the eye. After a few minutes, however, Luke heaved himself to his feet and noticed their bundles heaped next to a tree.

"Look! Eris gave us back our luggage, wherever she was keeping it…"

This coaxed Thalia out of her discomfort, and she proceeded to stand and help him shoulder the bags, grinning lightly and making idle jokes about his apparel back at the goddess's funhouse. Luke simply snickered back and countered with what Eris had forced her to wear during the stay.

About a two miles in walking (and it was a reassurance to see houses begin to dot the side of the road again, and regular mortals saunter about the streets), Thalia slung her arm over his shoulder, and at complete random, whispered—

"You're a great friend, you know that?"

The words touched down in his core, and Luke could not entirely comprehend the many feelings that rushed over him, closing up his throat, making it difficult to breathe. He let his lips form a genuine curve and looked at her without embarrassment, cocking his head and letting blonde hair fall adrift.

"You too, Thalia."

And quite gently, he placed his arm around her shoulder, as they continued to stroll into the outskirts of a little town, both thinking, in their own way, that no god or any other supernatural force could blight a friendship as beautiful and potent as theirs.

Crouched in the shadows, watching intently, was a small girl with blonde hair and a bronze knife curled between her fingers.

A/N: A-GASP! I wonder who THAT could be…sorry, I don't know why I'm feeling so sarcastic right now…lol. Well, there you have it: the chapter that took forever to write! If you caught hints of Luke/Thalia…this time it _**was **_intentional. I know in the last chapter I said I didn't want it, but the story seems to be leaning towards the pairing, and I've warmed up to it. Also, please REVIEW! It's the all-time remedy for a writer going through writer's block, ya know…-


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